Process Engineer Intern Review

I really enjoyed my placement throughout the whole 12 months I was there. The first couple of months were quite mundane with the amount of training that was required but after all of the training was complete, I was extremely busy, working in the labs every week. My work was very interesting, with lots of opportunities to gain knowledge and skills in areas other than engineering so I felt it was a very rounded placement.

All of my colleagues treated me like I was a permanent staff member and as though I was not just a student on an industrial placement. I felt that my opinion was valued and listened to, with some senior team members seeking me out for help on instruments that I had been newly trained in. They were very good at making me feel comfortable and made sure I was comfortable with the work I was doing.

I had weekly meetings with my supervisor who was very helpful in my daily and weekly tasks and workload. I felt that I had more than enough support and felt confident in asking questions if I was unsure but I was also left to design my own experiments and felt like I had a good degree of responsibility. I had monthly meetings with my team manager who was also very helpful if I was unsure about anything or had questions.

For the first couple of months, I was not that busy because of all the reading and training that was required before I had access to the lab work. It was busy in terms of how much time the reading and training consumed but did not feel busy compared to the remaining months. The rest of the placement was a very good balance of work. Most weeks I had lab work which required planning, executing, interpreting results and writing up a lab report which kept me very busy but I did not feel overloaded with work.

I was given a good and comfortable amount of responsibility during my placement, which increased as the placement progressed. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was asked to help on a couple of other projects and I was not treated like a student, instead I was handed the full responsibility of another senior project team member which I very much enjoyed. I had the authority to make purchases when I needed them and was left to complete my own work packages with very little help and input from other team members.

The interpersonal skills were the most significant skills I gained because I learned how to act as another team member instead of just a placement student. I gained lots of confidence with my work packages and was not afraid or nervous to give my opinion or gain help from other colleagues. I was trained in a variety of pieces of equipment, both analytical and process operation units and my understanding of how the theory of my degree is applied to the pharmaceutical processes has definitely strengthened.

The atmosphere was always a positive one and I felt comfortable with all 20 people in the office once I had gotten to know them more. Everybody was always happy to answer questions and help if needed. During the COVID-19 lockdown, the office was much less busy and only a maximum of 3-4 people were in the office each day. However, it was still a nice and peaceful environment which was great to work in.

During the placement, I always had things to do, whether it was the training at the start of the placement or the work to be done in the lab. I felt as though there was always something for me to do and I was never left bored or with nothing to do. Overall, I would say that the placement was very well organised and there was a clear plan of what my work would consist of, with a few changes that occurred along the way as the experiments and understanding of the drug product progressed.

I had the opportunity at the very beginning of the placement to visit two of the AstraZeneca sites in Sweden, all expenses paid. This was a fantastic experience as I saw how the teams operated at different sites and how the company worked together as a whole over multiple sites to achieve the ultimate goal of delivering drugs to the patient. There were lots of online training sessions for software like Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint etc which were all pre-recorded and free to do. There were also in-person training sessions which I attended for free to develop skills like experiment planning and Excel.

I enjoyed my placement very much and would love to get a job there after I graduate from my degree. There are a range of job opportunities, from the graduate scheme, which allows 3 x 8 month placements at sites all over the work, to the jobs as a chemical engineer or scientist in the different departments. I enjoyed the work I did in the specific department I was in so would love to continue working in the same department, however, the atmosphere of the company and the work done elsewhere by chemical engineers is also just as appealing.

All of the students were given each other's contact details so we very quickly made contact and got to know each other. Out of the 25 placement students based at the Macclesfield site, there were around 12 of us who regularly met us and socialised outside of work. Additionally, there were a few socials throughout the year, before the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, with the project team which was a good chance to get to know them more outside of work.

Macclesfield is a developing town and is gradually becoming more expensive to live in. However, I found it very good value as it has good connections to major cities. For example, a train to Manchester is 20 minutes, 1.5 hours to Birmingham and around 2.5 hours to London Euston, with no changes needed. There are a range of shops, from Aldi to Marks and Spencers so you can easily choose how much you want to spend on daily living.

Macclesfield has lots of bars that are quite good to go to but the one club is very small. The club has two rooms, one of which is Popworld, so the music is mainstream cheesy pop songs whereas the other room is chart remixes mostly. However, it is 20 minutes on the train to Manchester so if a better club is wanted, it's not too far away or too expensive to get there. We prefer the bars though in Macclesfield as there is a large range, from the cheap Wetherspoons to the more expensive wine and gin bars.

There are loads of activities in Macclesfield, including laser quest, bowling, bouldering, axe throwing, escape rooms and more so it is a good place to be. Again, there are also good links to some big cities like Manchester which have a very large range of activities to do. There are lots of shops in Macclesfield and anything that it doesn't have, is usually in Manchester. At AstraZeneca, there is a volunteering day that each team gets to choose the activity for. This is a paid day where you go and do some volunteer work with your team.