Electrical Engineering Vacation Student Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Arup with respect to both working in the office and the social activities after work. I can only speak for the Cardiff Office, but the office atmosphere is great, and with a relatively young team, there are plenty of opportunities to enjoy a multitude of the social activities hosted by the department.

I felt really valued during my placement proven by the work I was assigned. I was given a relatively large amount of responsibility as soon as I joined the team. Over the short time I have been there I have felt like a valued member of all projects that I have contributed.

I was provided with both a buddy, who was a graduate that had been in the team for just under a year, and a mentor. Both of them helped me though any issues I had and would usually help me straight away even when they were busy. On my first couple of days my buddy spent a few hours going through the software packages that they used which was really useful.

I was usually very busy day to day and was always given work immediately if I asked for something to do. I was allowed to choose which projects I worked on and decided to work on a large number of projects over the six weeks which kept me very busy. Having many projects to work on meant I could be contributing to many different projects in a single day.

I was given a good amount of responsibility when I joined. Once my buddy had seen that I was confident in using the software packages I was able to do model editing for the main models as well as calculations. I produced lighting planning proposals for clients and was responsible for checking emergency lighting calculations

This placement gave a strong backing for technical skills outside the remit of my university course. Building services is rarely explored in any detail at university, but having this experience has allowed me to learn how to operate and manipulate hugely useful software tools. As well as the technical skills acquired it exposed me to how consultancies work in general with respects to bidding for projects.

I can only speak for the Cardiff Office, but the office atmosphere is great, and with a relatively young team, there are plenty of opportunities to enjoy a multitude of the social activities hosted by the department. Everyone felt on the same level which was probably helped by the directors and associates sitting amongst the graduates in the office.

The graduate scheme itself is hugely appealing. The graduates I worked with had a large amount of responsibility and found the work interesting. There is also a welcome bonus and profit share scheme. After my placement I had a review with HR which then allowed me to be fast tracked to interview. Normally if the office liked you they seem to be keen to have you back as a grad. A lot of the engineers there had done a summer placement and then joined.

The social scene made the job much more appealing. I went to a number of social events with the teams, including going out for dinner, drinks after work, mini golf and go karting. The company also paid for the whole office to have a dinner party at a hotel to celebrate the offices anniversary. It was great way of meeting people from across the business.

Cardiff is a great city to live and work in. I have lived there for 4 years and have found that it is significantly cheaper than most other cities. Rent is very reasonable and a lot cheaper compared to Bristol. Going out is fairly cheap with the student offers available as well as all the bars and pubs having steep competition.