Summer Student Review

It has been very enjoyable working here. The people are very friendly and the work environment is great with the perfect balance making it very comfortable and enjoyable to come into work everyday. There has been a good flow of work coming my way and it has been of different areas, this means that I have done more than just Engineering and have better all-round knowledge of the business.

I felt valued by everyone, when I helped someone with work, they made it clear to me whether they were happy or not with what I have done. They also gave constructive feedback to help me improve on the work that I have done. Everybody is very nice and welcoming, where most people introduced themselves to me in the first few days and I feel like I know everybody on more than a working basis with knowledge of families and home lives, its been great.

There was always a manager around - whether that was my manager or somebody just below him. This meant that there were always atleast 4 managers in the office if I ever got stuck for work or needed extra support. I am very happy with the support provided to me and the help by managers when I did extra work for them.

This varied on a day-to-day basis, there would be some days where I was very busy with lots to do and to keep me busy for a few days. However, there were also some days which were quiet with little to do. However, this is because there was a quiet period in the office and so I would expect the workload to be busier during the rest of the working year.

I was given some responsibility with the work that I was given. This depended on the work but I believe that I could have had more responsibility as this would have kept me more busy during the quiet periods. The responsibility that I was given was great and I was happy to take work off of other colleagues hands to make their jobs a bit busier.

My skills developed greatly, I got a great experience of what it would be like to work at Atkins and in the working world in general. The skills that I have gained have included experience in new softwares (like CAD) that I hadn't tried before and also developing the skills that I already had like Excel. I also got to know what the working world is like and this will definitely help me when I go back into my studies. This will allow me to develop my skills further and the working life has taught me to be more organised and in control of what I need to do. This will help me to do better in my studies and I will take all of my new skills away with me to do better in the future.

The atmosphere was lovely, everybody would greet one another every morning. There was never any uncomfortable moments, everybody seemed to get on with one another. There was a great balance of professionalism and friendship. It depended on the busyness of the day, but when conversations were going on, it was very normal for people to chip in and a 2-person general chit chat quickly turned into a group talk.

The internship was well organised with training schemes that had to be completed. However, it was difficult sometimes to find work. However, the communications between people in the office was good enough to ask somebody if I needed help or guidance.

I believe that if I were with the company for a longer time then I would have definitely have more money invested into me in terms of training and building my skills.

I have been offered the opportunity to return here next summer and then potentially come onto the graduate scheme if next summer goes well. They are thinking about their future and clearly are considering how they can have students more integrated into the company. There were numerous other students doing the placements and many graduate engineers which made it clear that they are a growing company.

The social scene usually involved eating lunch together, going for drinks, or going out for a meal. Everybody got on well and everybody was included in these get-togethers which made the people seem very warm and friendly.

I was living from home and so I commuted in, spending about £40.00 a week on petrol. The area isn't great for socialising but my colleagues would make the best of the area.

There is only 1 club which doesn't look great but London and Kingston aren't too far. There are also lots of bars and restaurants and pubs which people can go to if they want.

There were many sporting activities around which were subsidised by the company but there could have been more company organised opportunities.