UK Civil Intern Review

My internship with Bechtel was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. From the off I was given real responsibility and at no point did I feel like I was just doing 'intern duties' or menial tasks. What you get from the internship is up to you. There is no template for the work you will be doing and you can take on as much or as little responsibility as you are comfortable with. Similarly you can get involved with your colleagues and the social side as much as you feel comfortable. Your day-to-day work is dispersed with weekly organised meetings and talks with specialists from different areas of the company allowing you to get a good insight into the business as a whole.

From the start I felt valued. I was issued with a company laptop, email address and desk, immediately making me feel part of the team and not just temporary. I was introduced to my line manager who briefed me on the project and introduced me to everyone I would be working with. As I stated completing tasks my colleagues began to realise my capabilities and as a result began giving me more responsibility, making me feel more valued.

My managers and supervisors were extremely helpful. Some had been interns before and so understood what it was like to be in my position. They were all perfectly happy to continually be asked questions and sometimes challenged you by asking you the questions. As a whole everyone was very approachable and even if your managers weren't able to help someone else would. Bechtel is a huge company so you will always be able to find what you are looking for somewhere.

You can be as busy as you want to be! It fluctuates but standard working hours are 08.30 – 17.30. Two or three days a week I stayed longer or started earlier just because I wanted to get more done.

The responsibility you are given does slightly depend on how proficient you are with your tasks. As a whole though I did feel I was given a good amount of responsibility and the work I did actually had an impact.

The internship demonstrated how a massive company like Bechtel operates, the importance of maintaining good relationships and how to effectively communicate technical information. The internship also taught me how to manage my responsibilities and schedule my workload accordingly, pretty essential for university life.

The general atmosphere in the office was a very good one. It was a good balance of sociable and work related. I was in a client integrated office so you did have to be conscious of what you were saying and understand it is likely to be overheard.

There were two parts to the internship; one was your day to day work and the other was the weekly events scheduled to give you a better insight into the company. The weekly events were organised very well and your daily work was not organised. The logic to this is that any work you do undertake is not planned and is current and relevant. It also puts the onus on you to seek out what work you want to do.

Bechtel invested a lot of both time and money into our personal development. Weekly events were scheduled to give us a good insight into the company. Networking opportunities allowed us to speak to people all over the business and regular site visits were scheduled to give us an understanding of how a wide variety of project operated. My line manager was also interested in making sure I got the most out of my internship. She organised site visits for me and also helped improve my presentation skills. 'Bechtel University' is an online learning platform which allows you to complete a variety of courses in a wide range of subjects - not just engineering - if you wanted to explore a subject further.

Future employment prospects with this company are high. The main appeal to me is the scope to get good international exposure on a wide variety of projects at an early stage of your career.

There was a very good social scene amongst fellow interns. Bechtel encouraged us to socialise amongst ourselves by organising several very enjoyable social events. As a group of interns we also all got along very well and many of us met up outside of work for dinner and drinks on numerous occasions.

The internship was in London so naturally you are subject to London prices. My project was in Vauxhall which had a good number of reasonably priced places to eat and drink. It also had excellent transport links.

London nightlife caters for every possible taste.

NextGen which is a group within Bechtel which organises many social events. In the two months I was there I went to Ascot and played lawn Bowls with the company. Your colleagues were normally also keen to do activities outside of work, wether this is going for drinks or playing golf. There were also several site visits and networking events organised for us outside of the office.