EngFest has been running since 2016, offering first and second year students the opportunity to get creative and construct real-life projects.

"EngFest is our opportunity for students to exhibit the work that they do," engineering lecturer Shara Cameron said.

"We don't have exams in our course because we feel that the best way for students to demonstrate what they've learnt is make it more realistic."

First year students participate in a project with Engineers Without Borders (EWB), an international organisation that provides disadvantaged communities around the world with much-needed engineering services.

ALSO MAKING NEWS:

Each year the students visit and work with a different region to develop projects that meet the needs of the people in that area.

"There's lots of examples in the past of projects that have been implemented in communities around the world from work that first year engineering students did," Ms Cameron said.

This year the students developed projects for Cape York, with one group coming up with the concept of a rapid deployment maternity tent.

The transportable tent will be used for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women to give birth on country, in a safe and sterile environment, with all the necessary medical equipment featured in a normal hospital room.

"We started with the EWB challenge and they gave us design areas and design opportunities ... and then we weighted each design area and component to come up with what we thought would be most well-received and the most welcomed in the community," group member Tash Meyer-Cuthbert said.

"Originally we designed this medical tent but we realised it was a bit too broad to be able to design well and after our background research and looking at all the statistics we decided to refine it to a maternity tent."

Meanwhile, second year students have been busy creating projects for real clients with Blake Hugo and Brianna Duncan developing a crash barrier for the Blue Mountain City Council to be built over a historic culvert in Katoomba.

"Because the culvert was built in 1935 it's very significant to the area and they didn't want it damaged at all," Mr Hugo said.

"We couldn't remove any trees because it's a national park, we couldn't damage the culvert because it's so old and we also had to worry about stormwater and things like that."

Ms Cameron said engineering students could often be "far more creative than experienced engineers who are stuck on traditional ways".

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: