| Advice and Best Practice on how to build a tall, stable bird-catching tower as commissioned by The Grand Council of Bird Island |
This is a Knowledge Asset on how to build tall stable towers as required by the Bird Island Council. It represents compiled knowledge, good practice, tips and hints from over a decade of experience with the Knoco Bird Island exercise.
About the Exercise
The exercise is to build a tower out of Jenga™ bricks, poster paper, rubber bands, skewers and a doll. It must be built as high as possible and must also remain intact while undergoing two tests:
-
- a Hurricane (a blast from a hairdryer)
-
- an Earthquake (dropping a Yellow Pages directory near it).
Tower heights to date (2nd build)
Record height = 345 cm
Mode = 290
Mean = 272
You need to beat 232 to be in the game!
| Some high-level learnings from previous exercises. | |
| Build for height not strength | “The tests didn’t really prove much of a constraint” “Basically, if it stands up, it will pass the tests” |
| Ask to do pre-testing for yourselves, to see how stringent the tests are. | “We could have got much higher the first time around if we’d realized how pathetic the tests were” |
Best Practice tower design Invisible net right at the top Spare bits of paper on top of sticks Bendiman, on top of the paper, extends his reach with sticks Paper torn in 2 and rolled Special joining module Bricks on their side, 2 to a course Tower built on firm foundation |
|
| Risk Management Project Management |
|
Supplied under license. Strict copyright Knoco Ltd.