DESIGN OF FARMERS MARKET ON UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO CAMPUS

In my first year of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Toronto, I was apart of a design team focused on designing an optimal farmers’ market to run on my school campus. We got to work with a real client from Regenesis, a non-profit organization focused on promoting sustainability to students, with whom we met with bi-weekly.This project was heavily project management related and I gained a great amount of experience on how to properly define objectives and on how to use different tools and strategies to determine an optimal design. Specifications my team were responsible for included determining the optimal location, running hours and days of the market, how many vendors/tables, where to find materials like tables if needed, regulations and permits, and what items to sell. Because of all these specifications that had to be determined, it is quite obvious that a lot of research and outreach to organizations on campus was essential. My team and I conducted many in person meetings with the people at certain locations that we deemed was a potential market location.

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As team leader, I ensured that all meetings had a plan for the tasks that needed to be achieved, as well as a time for all members to catch up  on what had been done. After discussing values with the team, we all agreed that in order for our team to be successful, the team must agree to be accountable, motivated, and collaborative. This proved to be very important later on in the project, where many things seemed to be not working out in terms of the legalities of a location on campus. However, through persistence and a desire to achieve our goal, we were able to find a solution. I am very proud to say that my Team and I ended the project successfully with a presentation that the client was present for and gave positive feedback on.