Student Design Engineer Review

After the first day of working at Triumph, I knew I had made the right desicion in accepting the placement with them in the Accessories Design department. The job for me is the perfect combination of mechanical engineering that I am studying at university, and product design that I studied for my A Levels. I have enjoyed being challeneged on a day to day basis with solving problems and have felt like a very valued member of my team.

As a student, I initially felt that I might be slightly looked down upon by colleagues as they expect you to either not be very good or not experienced. I could not have been more wrong. There have been several instances where people have come to me for help or advice with things, particularly the new CAD system we switched to as I took to it pretty well. I would say that I am very much part of the team here and have enjoyed being about to be social with people both inside and outside of work hours.

On day one of my placement I was introduced to my mentor, team and team leader. My mentor has been invaluable in helping me with CAD issues, supporting me in learning Triumph standards of practise and drawing releases as well as countless other things. The rest of my team and team leader have also been thoroughly helpful whenever needed for help or advice and I cannot fault them at all. I'd say in all, everyone at Triumph is there to help you as being accomodating is often in the best interests of themselves and mostly, the company.

I have been given a wide range of tasks to complete in my internship. They have ranged from the somewhat dull but necessary tasks that don't require a lot of knowledge or time, to some really in depth projects that I have been allowed to work largely on my own. The big projects have occupied large amounts of time, meaning I am never struggling for work and have been kept busy on a daily basis. My workload has been managed by both my mentor and team leader to make sure that I don't have too much work to do at any one time. I would say that the interesting jobs massively outweigh the more mundane ones and there is always something that you can help with or work you can pick up on the slower days.

As I have previously stated, I have been allowed to work on some of my own projects, which has largely incloved either starting a product from scratch, or taking up someone elses early schemed work and taking it to a production level. All of my work has been checked by my team leader before it is progressed, but this is the case for all Design Engineers at Triumph. I would say all in all that I have been treated with the same responsibilites as I would if I were a new graduate.

I have developed my CAD skills no end on me placement at Triumph. Before coming here, I would have struggled to design a shoe box in CAD but I am now surfacing like the best of them! The only disappointing thing is that I'll being going back to SolidWorks at university next year from Creo and I don't think I'll like that! I have also been able to hugely develop my skills with technical drawings, having only previously produced a general assembly at university. I now fully understand drawing notes and am pretty up to date with BS8888 drawing standards. I will certainly be able to transfer these skills into my final year project at university.

I would say that there is a perfect balance of work/fun in my office. Everyone knows where to draw the line and when its time to knuckle down to work but at the same time, all levels of employees have a laugh and a joke with one another. This is also carried through to social events outside of the office, which involve lots of opportunities to try new things, team build, and of course, sometimes end up in the pub on a Friday afternoon!

The placement was very well organised. I was given a start date very early on that was stuck to and was told that it would be 12 months, date to date, meaning that I started on 7/7/15 and finished on 7/7/16. I have also been given the opportunity to stay on after this time for as long as I wish. I also was given a timing plan for my first 4 weeks upon arrival with all of the inductions that I would need to have. The only issue with organisation was with uniform. I had ordered some work polo shirts with my acceptance letter for the job and was told that I would receive these in my first week. Because of this, I didn't have much top half work wear to start with and after I was told that I wouldn't have my uniform for a while due to supply issue, I had to go and buy some shirts for work after the first week. I understand that the supply chain has been sorted now so I can't see this being an issue for future students.

Within the first 6 weeks of my placement I recieved 10 days worth of CAD training, covering basic modeling in solids to more advanced surfacing that I would need to use in my models for products. This training was invaluable in my development. I also recieved 'known consignor' training in order to have access to the warehouse

Future employement with Triumph would be of great interest to me as the job that I am doing now is the kind of work that I want to get into eventually. I would jump at the opportunity to come back here after university.

As already stated, I have been to many social events with colleagues. These have included go-karing team building event, rugby sevens in the park, seeing the Leicester Tigers play, seeing Coventry Blaze play, watching several of the 6Nations games at peoples houses and a future paintballing event.

I chose to live in Hinckley, which is the town in Leicestershire where Triumph are based. The cost of living here was reasonably cheap, paying £530 a month for rent split between myself and my housemate (a friend from univsersity who also had an internship at Triumph). There are plenty of pound shops and the like in Hinckley so you could live quite cheaply if you desired to. Socialising was the average cost I would expect anywhere else.

Hinckley is not the hub of social nightlife. Coming from the Sheffield/Derbyshire border myself, I was disappointed to find that there no pubs that match what I am used to. There are a few nice places to go, but they are sometimes hard to find. Coming from a big city will be a shock to people as there is only on nightclub here, to which I've only been once, and don't intend to go back! I have been to Leicester once for the staff Christmas do and I had a great time, and there is also Birmingham pretty close by so there is the opportunity to go for a night out elsewhere. If you like indian food, you'll coming to the right part of the UK as there are some fantastic places to eat on the Golden Mile in Leicester!

Like anywhere, there are plenty of sport teams and clubs in the surrounding areas. I joined Nuneaton RUFC briefly with the intention of getting back into playing again but I was sadly not good enough for the 1st team and there was too much competition and not enough players to make a regular 2nd team what was more my level. I have also joined the gym at Hinckley leisure centre at a reasonable price so have been going 3-4 times a week in the evenings. I have also started playing golf again and have been pleasantly surprised that there are a lot of good golf course around.