Although not in the aerodynamic category, a company I worked for did a group exercise providing candidates with some old newspapers, sellotape and other items and they had to create a structure that could not only stand but hold plastic cups of water. They used this activity to assess different personalities e.g.assertiveness, natural leaders and also how well people collaborated in a group task. Perhaps you could create a similar activity but relevant to your particular industry

It would be useful to know what, "all the desired outcomes and observations" are before being able to offer a method of assessment.

Downloadable documents from the British Psychological Society's testing centre on using assessment centres can be accessed here: ptc.bps.org.uk/.../guidelines-testing-and-test-use

In reply to Cass Clothier:

Hi Cass, this is really helpful thank you.

In reply to David Perry:

Hi David. The desired outcomes and observations would be similar to any group assessment - to be able to observe team work, collaboration, communication, assertiveness, leadership, differing personalities.

In reply to Bryanna:

Hey Bryanna

I think differing personalities may be a difficult one to observe and therefore score against. I think David does raise a good point. When I've ran these in the past, we would define what competencies we were looking for (based on the roles) ahead of time and then we would ensure that every activity over the two days covered these competencies (ensuring each competency was covered at least twice). Given that I assume you look at their overall scores as part of the debrief and this forms a big part of your decision-making, I'd say this should be your first area to focus on and then it will be easier to choose the right group activity for you.