THE gauntlet has been thrown down to students at City of Oxford College, who have been asked by a major construction firm to design a new roundabout.

On Friday 19 construction students met for the first time with Swedish company Skanska, the fifth biggest construction firm in the world.

They have been challenged to design a roundabout junction to the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, taking into account traffic and planned developments.

Skanska strategic manager John Murray said: “The launch was excellent, and exceeded our expectations.

“We were really impressed by how switched-on the students were and by the research they had already done. They asked some intelligent and pretty searching questions.

“Skanska has a long-term contract with Oxfordshire County Council to improve and maintain the road network. We are looking at that junction to see how we can improve its capacity. But we are also keen to work with the community and make a difference.”

Over the next 12 weeks, students will work in groups of three and four to come up with three designs to free up traffic, which will then be presented to Skanska.

According to data already gathered, in peak periods about 1,000 cars travel through the junction towards the A34 Chilton Bypass, and 92 vehicles turn north to south into the Harwell Campus.

Mr Murray added: “I definitely think the students are up to the job. Some had clearly already visited the site or looked for existing planning applications.

“We absolutely could be looking at future employees. That’s part and parcel of wanting to work with the college; the industry will need new people coming through.”

Once the project is finished Skanska will choose their preferred designs and use them – in whole or in part – to draw up plans for the junction.

Among those taking part is Sarah Reid, 29, taking a BTEC level 3 in construction and the built environment.

She said: “It’s good that the college is putting on something like this for our development. We found out about it in September – we haven’t been down to the site but we did a lot of research and got a lot of data so we could show off.

“It’s a very busy junction. We have got a few ideas in the pipeline at the moment; we know they don’t want traffic lights so it’s any type of roundabout.

“There are three teams of four and one team of five. We’re battling against each other.”

Helen Brind of Activate Learning said the project was an “exciting step forward” with students receiving support and mentoring from industry experts over the next 12 weeks.