Lighting the Way to Streamlined Lunch Meetings
A challenge confronting Freese and Nichols’ support staff turned into an opportunity for high school students from White Settlement, Texas, to develop their research and engineering design skills while creating a practical solution.
As part of our firm’s collaboration with the Texas Christian University College of Science & Engineering, 15 students from Brewer High School’s engineering class designed and built a red/green light system to help Freese and Nichols support specialists streamline the lunch rush for meetings at our Fort Worth headquarters.
Dan Koss with our Electrical Engineering team guided the students in developing a mechanism that can be stationed at two lunch buffet areas. Dan’s goal was to devise an automated system to help Support Specialist Kayla Koko, who handles lunch meeting setups for groups on one of our floors. The system displays a red light before a meeting and while the lunches are restricted for meeting attendees – then it flips to a green light after a customizable time limit, signifying that leftovers are up for grabs.
Simplifying the leftovers question
Lunch is an integral part of Freese and Nichols’ culture – it’s an opportunity for collaboration, connection and productive conversations. However, as the company continues to grow, managing the lunch meeting process has become more complex.
“The goal was to remove the guesswork around when lunches are available for the rest of the office, and to ensure that meeting participants receive their meals without delays or confusion,” Kayla said. “The result? A smoother, more predictable lunch process that has made a noticeable difference. For me personally, it has saved valuable time in my workday, I no longer need to monitor the buffet area to make sure everything is running as planned.“
Teaching engineering problem-solving
During the project’s initial planning phase, Dan and the students explored how the project can reduce the administrative tasks of monitoring lunches set up for meeting participants. The light aims to reduce trips to and from the buffet counter to check the status of the food and/or change a sign indicating whether leftovers are available for all comers.
The students were divided into groups assigned with different tasks focusing on specific aspects of the box housing the system’s mechanics: structural, ladder logic, schematics/electrical and exterior. Dan intentionally let the students reason through the project on their own, so the final product is their design.
The design process was not without hiccups. The first glass globes the students received for the lights were miscolored, the timing relays were defective, and the replacement relays required them to alter their ladder logic controls.
Despite these challenges, the students prevailed and created functioning traffic lights.
“What made this project even more rewarding was the opportunity to collaborate with Dan Koss and our student outreach team,” Kayla said.
“As an engineering firm, this initiative was a perfect fit for our culture of innovation and problem-solving. It also gave us a chance to engage with the next generation of engineers and demonstrate how even small-scale systems can have a meaningful impact. This was a fun and practical project, and I’m excited to see how it continues to support our day-to-day operations.”
Transforming inexperience into confidence
The collaboration with Brewer High began through Freese and Nichols’ partnership with TCU’s Department of Engineering. Dan and Assistant Division Manager Vimal Nair, our TCU liaison, were asked to develop simple project options for the students. In total, the students, many of whom had never taken an engineering course before, worked on four projects, featuring balloon-powered cars, paper bridges and Elevated Storage Tank (EST) models, escalating the challenge as their skill levels developed.
Randall Bradshaw, Brewer’s engineering teacher, said this class was one of the best and first opportunities for the students to experience engineering in high school.
“I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to Freese and Nichols for their involvement with our students,” Randall said. “The students have demonstrated significant growth during this course. Your support provided an excellent opportunity for the students to learn and develop.”
Within the EST project, the students prototyped, built, plumbed, wired and explored the purpose and function of ESTs with Dan at their side – he visited campus eight times to work closely with the students. They also learned about control design and ladder logic – skills they put to the test to create their lunch buffet light.
Randall said the students also learned presentation skills, patience, teamwork and how to work with small tools.
Randall said the students learned about electrical safety, relay logic, and the challenges associated with creation and construction. “They have faced analysis paralysis and were exposed to real-world problems that would otherwise have been impossible to encounter,” he said.
Because of this class, two students plan on pursuing engineering in college.