Emission Technology Consultant Review

The technologies I worked with were state-of-the-art and had a lot of future potential. The work ranged a bit, so there was some variance to my daily routine. In retrospect, it was quite exciting to be involved in such cutting-edge industrial applications and transformations.

My team were very happy to have extra help and tried to get me involved in their work as much as possible. I did my best to convey my strong work-ethic to them, so they wanted me to help out in all aspects of the team's business to give me an opportunity to demonstrate my worth to them.

My supervisor and my team were very enthusiastic about me being with them, so they gave me as many resources (web links, research papers, word documents) as possible, Whilst reading up and doing my homework, I was also undertaking a lot of practical experience, following my colleagues to different sites, research areas, manufacturing plants, labs etc.

I travelled between sites almost every other day and comfortably got my work done outside of that. There were times when I had deadlines to meet, files to send to managers, and printouts to take for meetings and I was able to meet those requirements as well.

There were a lot of projects which I was involved with at different stages, but I was mainly involved in support-functions. My areas of work were not highly critical to the project and level of accountability was quite low.

My experience really helped me with certain parts of my course at uni, and I also learnt a lot of skills which will be useful to me in the future. I gained an understanding of how projects are planned, how research is conducted to meet a certain goal and how to manage machinery and manpower for efficient manufacturing.

I went to a lot of different offices but the general environment was mostly dynamic, so it never got tedious or repetitive. The people were mostly friendly and the atmosphere was quite relaxed.

There was a rough structure to the placement but there was hardly any future planning for the projects I was involved in. If one of my team members wanted me to join them on a certain day, I would follow them down and assist in any way I could.

Most of the investment was for travel and getting access to different sites. I had to go through a lot of health and safety training as well, since different sites had different functions and different hazards.

JM is a nationally-renowned organisation and are very keen to recruit graduates from universities nation-wide, BUT - they are unfortunately not comparable to the larger engineering firms everyone knows of. Their graduate scheme is quite well-structured and seems interesting, but I'm more interested in other, larger, internationally-renowned businesses in this area.

I met a lot of fellow students across multiple sites and we always tried to meet up every weekend and so on. Most of us were engineering and science students, and we got along quite well. We socialised and tried out new restaurants and pubs, which was a nice way to wind-down after the work-week.

Some of the nicer bars and restaurants in Reading are really expensive so we often had to go to smaller places, which were often packed with people. I was commuting to Reading from my home in Surrey, so that was not an issue for me. Otherwise, accommodation is quite expensive in Reading.

The Nightlife varied, depending on how much we were willing to spend. Some of the more expensive and upmarket clubs were amazing, comparable to some of the best places in London for about half the entry-price. Drinks were quite expensive in most clubs and restaurants, but the pubs were very reasonable - both in terms of food and drinks.

Most of the opportunities were work-related but still, I got an insight into how different parts of the company operate and understood how the supply chain works together. This will be an invaluable experience for the future