Mechanical Engineering Intern Review

I really enjoyed the internship, I was part of a small but very friendly team that made each day interesting and engaging. During the early stages, there was so much to learn that the weeks flew by trying to keep up. Once you are settled in, you are able to really make your own imprint on the various responsibilities and daily tasks that you have. I particularly enjoyed the balance between time in the office, at the shopfloor and a different parts of the business.

I definitely felt valued by the team that I joined. In truth, interns provide an essential service to GE Aviation Wales so they simply have to value your contribution. However, there is a more general disdain for interns within other parts of the business that can make work a little difficult. However, learning to deal with and overcome obstacles like this is part of a working life. On the whole, this was not an issue at all.

No issues here. Supervisors were always willing to take time out of their day to help me with my tasks and jobs. In fact, they became close friends both inside and outside the site. Not only that, colleagues in different parts of the business including the shop floor were usually more than willing to spend time with you and give you all the tools and knowledge you need to perform your job efficiently and effectively.

The nature of my particular role within the company meant that this varied somewhat from week to week. Generally speaking, I was kept very busy between meetings, writing up reports, projects, performing daily tasks on shop floor and the internship program itself. As someone who much prefers to be busy and contribute to the overall work, I thrived off the pace of the work. I was required, but never compelled, to stay late on a few rare occasions in order to stay on top of my work.

If you take an internship role, you can never expect huge amounts of responsibility and that does not change at GE Aviation. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see the level of responsibility given to me during my time. Although you are never totally running the show, you work closely alongside mentors and supervisors who will rely on you to deliver certain objectives without their continual oversight. There is a good level of trust between managers and interns.

This is hard to gauge. I learnt valuable skills that have prepared me for future roles within engineering. Simple lessons in how to deliver engaging presentations, hold a meeting, prepare for important conversations, understand business objectives against daily activities and the importance of building your own network within the company will be invaluable for my future. However, many of the lessons learnt aided my professional career perhaps without touching upon the topics I studied at university.

The office I was part of was one of the best in the company. There were regular occasions where food was brought in to be shared round. It was clear that everyone in the office respected and enjoyed working with each other despite the hierarchies and different level of experience each member had. I felt the office struck a valuable balance between a strong work ethic and a social place where people felt comfortable enough to walk over to each other's desks for a friendly chat.

This is one area that could be improved. It was clear that vast improvements in this area had been made recently before my arrival with the company, however, there were times when the structure of the internship and the program that was set up for us was lacking. However, suitable people have been placed in charge and are striving hard to improve every person's experience of the internship such that I don't think this should be a barrier to anyone thinking of joining the company.

There was some training available, and the emphasis was on each individual to seek out that development where it was needed. In addition to that, seminars ,and set ups that looked similar to lectures at university, were set up to provide targeted training in different areas. These were hosted by a number of knowledge and important engineers across the business who had taken time out of their busy schedule to meet and teach us which was valuable.

I would be willing to work there again but there were limited opportunities to stay locally in the business.

Interns socialised alot, tend to live together and eat together every day in the canteen. There were nights out, meals, cinema trips, lots of pub trips and really anything that you wanted. Close friendships were made during the placement year that have outlived my time with GE Aviation Wales. Interns and students tended to live in Cardiff, a very short journey from the site, which has all the things you need from a capital city to be a really enjoyable place to live.

Cardiff is a great city to live in both financially and socially.

Good

There were lots of opportunities outside of work to get involved in certain activities. A number of interns helped the local area by clearing out damaged furniture from homes during the serious floods that were experienced during our time with the company. Interns often took part in Maths tutoring at local schools in preparation for exams. On top of this, there were events held such as a company-wide football tournament and the Three Peaks Challenge.