Mechanical Design & Environmental Engineer Review

I enjoyed my placement a lot. The work was varied, challenging and interesting. The companies policy of splitting the year into two 6 month placements, each in a different department, meant that I got a good appreciation of the whole company.

I feel I was seen as a useful team member once I settled in. My colleageues were happy to give time to help me, and my work was appreciated, particulaly when it resulted in the delivery of physical hardware.

I was given plenty of support by my line managers, as whenever I had quireies they would help or point me to someone who could. I was also assigned a company mentor, who also fulfilled the IMechE mentor role. We met bimonthly to discuss how my work was going, my placement objectives and my EMPDS quarterly reports.

Whilst working in mechanical design I was kept busy litterally 100% of the time. My line manager made sure I had tasks to get on with my giving me more than one, meaning I didn't have to sit around waiting on people to get back to me. Whilst working in environmental engineering I had just a few days during the 6 months in which I was having to look for work.

I was given a high degree of responsibility throughout my placement. I was treated like a graduate engineer in the companies eyes. I was respionsibly for numerous design tasks on final products going out to the customer. I was responsible for crucial test and proving work, and was seen as the authority with regards to some of the tests I ran. For a couple of design taks I was given my own budget and saw the task through from concept to delivery of hardware.

The greatest beneifit the placement gave me was far greater confidence when dealing with more senior engineers and other people in the workplace. The work I did means I will have tons of examples to use when writing my CV to apply for graduate jobs. The work tied in well with a large amount of the subjects I had studied at university, and allowed me to demonstrate and apply my skills learnt in university, as well as showing me the benifit of those subjects. I feel I will return to university far ahead of my colleages who missed out no a placement year, in terms of my ability to apply my academic skills to real world engineering and my appreaciation of why things are done like they are.

In the Mechanical Design office, the mood was a bit Dull, as the office was so large (a couple of hundred people). However my colleageues around me were freindly and talkative! Working in smaller offices in Environmental Engineering was more fun, as the smaller office layout encourages people to get to know each other.

The placement was extreemly well organised, the company takes on 40 undergraduates and graduates every year, so is very experienaced. The support given my the company mentor was aso very useful in helping me understand what I wanted from the placement.

The company started the placement with a week long training and orientation course, and set me on a multitude of other work related courses. If I found any aspect of my work needed training, I typically got the training fairly quickly.

I will likely be getting an offer in the coming months. My grad colleages say that almost all undergraduates get an offer to return for a summer placement or on the graduate scheme.

There are 40 grads/undergrads taken on each year, so the social scene is good, especially for those living in the same town. Since I lived at home and commuted to work, I missed out on this a bit, but still spent a good amount of time with the other undergraduates and gradsuates who started at the same time as me.

The cost of living in stevenage is quite good considering it is a london cummuter town. However stevenage is not the highest class place, and is only a small town, so although it is cheap, it is not particulaly amazing.

There are a few clubs in Stevenage, however it will likely be a step down for any students coming from a large student town or city.

Football and cricket are big events at mbda, with many of the graduates and undergraduates taking part in tornaments after work. The company social club also runs events throughout the year.