Power Academy Student Review

Work was engaging and fun, team were incredibly nice and so many opportunities to see what everyone else around the company does. Some days were boring as there was nothing to do, but that is the nature of consultancy and I used that time to sort out other things such as looking at training modules or the power academy project.

Once you have proved that you are somewhat competent as an intern then I was given harder more complicated work to do. I was able to get involved in a project and I felt like they were testing me in order to see if they wanted to keep me on as full time in the future. It felt great to be seen as a member of the team and I was often invited on work nights out.

My power academy mentors at the company were fantastic and always made sure I was ok and that any expenses I needed to fill out were completed. Any questions they were happy to answer, didn't feel embarrassed to ask anything. My line manager wasn't around much and seemed super busy, which was a shame as it meant people weren't checking if I had anything to do. However once someone else took over as project lead, the project lead kept making sure I was getting involved and had something to do. Just depends on the people I think as to how much support you get.

As I said above there were times where I didn't have much to do, but I filled the time by doing other small tasks like uni work. Would have been nice to have bigger projects to do rather than small bits of work, but I think the sheer amount of grads on my team meant they had the larger bits of work to do.

I was able to get involved with some report writing, but as it is a consultancy there isn't much hands on design to get involved with. The more exciting aspects of the project were left to the grads to do whereas I did a lot of research into regulations and components.

The grads on my team gave me so much useful advice for the future, as they had been through it before, and it's always worthwhile doing an internship as you get a broader experience of engineering. I would say that skill wise I learnt nothing new above my other internships with other companies, but each internship has reinspired me to keep going with my degree as its easy to give up in such a tough environment.

Lunch and learns, friendly chatty people, everyone grabbing tea together, after work socials. The atmosphere of Atkins offices is a rare thing to find, with lots of young people and everyone being very outgoing its hard not to make friends. If you struggled with a piece of work, as long as people weren't too busy, they were more than happy to help.

As Atkins have been doing power academy for a number of years its essentially a well oiled machine at this point. The work is entirely dependent on how busy the team/office is at that point, which is why they have a student project to keep you busy while there is no work to do. One of the best ideas I've seen at an internship as even if you weren't doing anything for the company I still felt like I was doing something worthwhile.

Paid for train/hotels to the power academy conference and when I wanted to visit another office for the day to see what it was like they paid for the rail travel there and back and were super keen for me to attend anything that would further my studies. There are also a number of internal modules you can complete.

The grad scheme is one of the best I have seen so I will definitely be looking to join. However I would say the general theme seems to be that people do their grad here, get a wide range of experience and then leave to become full engineers elsewhere. There seems to be no incentive to stay and that may be due to the monotony of consultancy work and the lack of hands on design.

There was a summer social with free alcohol and we went to the pub a few nights over the summer as a team. There was a skype chat for all the power academy students at Atkins across all the offices so it was cool to call up and ask them what they were doing in the other places so I know where to go next summer.

I was in Epsom so I could barely afford rent.... The pay at Atkins is probably worse than all the other companies I've seen, and the lack of compensation for being in London is very annoying, as it meant the glasgow students saw a lot more of the money than I did. I could afford rent and food and that was about it. Better if you are further north.

Epsom has no nightlife but I knew no one here and I don't enjoy going that much so it was fine. However there are really good links to London up until midnight so pub trips are perfect and I met lots of friends in London. However as always going out in London is a bit expensive.

There are loads of sporting opportunities and I got involved with the Epsom climbing club. The people were super friendly and taught me how to climb, as previously I had only been able to try bouldering. I think they also had five aside football and yoga. Would have loved to see music bands but I think its more sport focused here.