Build a Bridge Team Building Adventure

Pretend you’re an engineer for a day as you and your team design and build a prototype of a bridge. This team building adventure will ignite your team’s creative energy as they move through the stages of designing, planning, building, troubleshooting and presenting their prototypes to the other teams.

We’ll split your group into teams of 6 -10: each team then divides itself in half with the objective being to build two halves of a bridge in two separate locations that will be joined at the end of the program. With only limited simulated phone, email and fax communication to keep them on track during the construction phase, participants learn how to make the most of the planning phase and how to better communicate throughout the lifecycle of a project. Once built, the bridge prototypes are shared with the team, who assesses the aesthetic value of the creations, and tested for their strength. The teams that succeed are those in which someone in the group can capture everyone’s imagination, provide a vision and motivate them to move forward.

Build a Bridge can be facilitated indoors at almost any location, and works for groups as small as 8 and as large as 300. We particularly recommend this adventure for virtual teams (geographically dispersed groups) as it very closely parallels their daily work situation, R&D groups, and upper level managers who must coordinate the work of many disparate units.

Why We Recommend Build a Bridge for Your Team

• Build a Bridge requires a shared vision (the design) which must then be communicated through a variety of mediums: verbal, written, drawings, to other teammates.
• Participants must master resource allocation if they are to be successful: Build a Bridge requires good project management skills.
• Participants must be good at building consensus and implementing a plan. Choosing one bridge design that meets the specifications laid out in the program is difficult.
• Participants must be able to coordinate the efforts of many people who may not share work space.
• Build a Bridge requires both mechanical skills and interpersonal skills…it requires both attention to details and a big picture view…just like your workplace.
• It aligns with organizational values and interests around customer-orientation, quality orientation, cross-functional thinking, improved efficiencies, and adaptability.
• Build a Bridge provides an opportunity to examine the ambiguous nature of communication and reinforces best practices around proactively ensuring that one’s message is understood. 

Downloadable Program Description (pdf)

Build a Bridge Photo Gallery

Sample Build a Bridge Agenda

All Sample Agendas