Biomass - Using Anaerobic Digestion

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The Team

Group Introspective

Throughout the duration of the project we kept a good balance between academic and team-building activities. We had a good mix of four people, with backgrounds in electrical, chemical and environmental biology; this allowed a wide spread of experience and specialist knowledge that definitely helped us during hours of need. All four team members were communicative, helpful, eager to volunteer and (generally!) timely.

At times we actually suffered because too many of us wanted to do certain pieces of work for reasons of personal interest, and there was a certain amount of duplication. However, we met most weekdays and exchanged ideas often. Comparing and discussing our work sometimes resulted in heated discussions between certain group members, but the outcome was always a better and deeper understanding of the issues and the project benefited as a result. I'm sure we raised a few eyebrows in the library with the convictions of our discussions!

We seemed to cycle from periods of intense focus to times with less direction. Friction was evidenced during periods where information had to be digested and acted upon quickly! Our regular meetings and discussions brought us through these hazier times, however, when a group with less communication might have faltered. We enjoyed a few less academically taxing times together including our trips to the climbing wall and our research trip to Perthshire, and enjoyed tales of each other's eventful weekends.

Because our group had people with different specialist fields, we tended to work in these areas and understand each other's fields less during the depths of the project. As an interesting twist to understand each other's work better, we elected to present a random selection of other people's work at the final presentation. This forced us into a much greater understanding of each individual members work, and also provided greater satisfaction since we knew each of our pieces of work was also understood and approved of by the others.