Talented sixth-form students who created an innovative cable racking assembly as part of a national engineering project have been honoured for their work.

The team of Year 12 students created the system as part of their work on the Engineering Education Scheme.

The invention aims to significantly reduce the man hours required when installing cable racking around corners and it has now received critical acclaim from engineering experts.

The national scheme is run by the Engineering Development Trust and allows small teams from different schools to take part in designing, building and presenting an engineering project that could be of significant use to a local engineering company.

The team from Highfields - made up of India Uppal, Ryan Lucas, Kuljit Singh, Jake Badger, James Wilson and Gursharon Sansoia - was sponsored by Mott MacDonald Bentley, an engineering company which specialises in water treatment plants.

As part of the project, members of the group took part in a two-day residential at Loughborough University where they were able to start building a prototype of their project using the facilities in its engineering workshops.

They then recently took part in a National Celebration and Assessment Day where they displayed their project and presented their work to a panel of judges.

Mr A.Britton, Physics teacher, said: “The day proved to be very successful with some very positive feedback from the judges.”

All of the students have now gained their EES award and will also be presented with Gold CREST certificates to honour their work in the STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths).

Mr Britton said he was delighted to announce that Mott MacDonald Bentley had also agreed to support next year’s Highfield’s EES team.