Mechanical Engineering Summer Intern Review

I enjoyed my placement as every day was varied and the other staff were very friendly. It was interesting and revealing to see how much progress had been made on some of the sites within the space of a year as I had visited them in last year's summer placement.

I felt that other staff really valued what skills I brought to the team and this was reflected in my end of placement review and the fact that so many people were looking to get me involved with various tasks they were looking at and happy to have my input.

I felt that I was fairly unsupervised in general during the placement. At times I feel this was due to the confidence my colleagues have in me, and was nice when working on things I am comfortable with, but sometimes some more direction and structure would have been of benefit.

It took a couple of weeks for the work to start flowing in, but once it did I felt that the workload was about right. There was always something that I could be working on, and I had to effectively manage my time in order to deliver items of work to deadlines.

I created a display screen for the reception to detail some of the safety procedures and time left to key project milestones. Everyone would see this every day so it had to be right. I also analysed flow data for the whole site so that a scheme of work during a shutdown could be planned. And I had to help design and evaluate costings for six-figure parts of the plant.

Inevitably being involved in such huge, multi-faceted projects will provide numerous useful skills irrespective of which industry you end up in, but in particular the exposure to different CAD packages, coding ISEs and hands-on mechanical install experience will aid my studies greatly. Being around so many experienced personnel also provides great benefits in itself.

With the nature of a contractor, there was always a cycle of new companies and employees coming in, which is extremely exciting as it expands your network and removes the repetitiveness that office work can bring. Everyone was also very friendly and willing to give you advice in regards to any queries you had.

Initially people were unaware that I would be arriving to start on the first day, so it took a couple of weeks for IT systems to be set up and for me to get properly involved with various schemes of work. It didn't particularly need good organisation day-to-day as I would just work on appropriate items that were coming in for various people.

There were plenty of online modules available for development with various pieces of software and subjects. The company do possess a lot of training days but unfortunately none fell at appropriate times for me in such a short placement duration.This looks to be very different once you start as a graduate.

The core values of the company seem good and they seem keen on investing in individuals. There is a scope to get involved in a wide range of interesting projects and I feel that there is good opportunity for advancement into a more senior role that suits your preference and goals.

All the other placement students were friendly and keen to share experiences, although there were no specific social events.

I commuted from home so this is not really applicable.

I did not engage in any nightlife where I worked so this is not applicable.

I did not engage in any activities where I worked, but they were available.