Summer Placement Student Review

I hugely enjoyed my internship, and I was particularly impressed by the number of different experiences I was able to have at Arup in such a short period of time. I felt like I had a very productive month at Arup, and I would thoroughly recommend the experience to anyone interested in a career in Engineering

As soon as I joined the company I was made to feel part of the team. This is particularly important in a company such as Arup who work on large scale infrastructure projects, and I really enjoyed the collaborative environment I experienced on my placement. Everyone was willing to help me whenever I needed assistance

Although my supervisor was not on site until the first Thursday of my placement, I found that he was helpful throughout, and provided me with a lot of useful guidance. He was also very careful to thoroughly review the work I had done and provided me with constructive feedback for each task I completed. He was not always available to talk to, and sometimes took some time to give me feedback as he was so busy, but overall I felt I was given more than enough support during my internship.

As there were so many different projects going on at Arup, I was busy throughout the entirety of my placement. Thanks to the open, collaborative environment, it was easy to find work from others who could use some help, and in some cases I was even approached to help out with certain tasks! The fact that I was so busy meant that I was able to complete a lot of work considering the small amount of time that I was there.

I was given full responsibility for the primary task that I was given, whilst for most of my other projects I played more of a supporting role. Overall I was given a lot more responsibility than I expected considering I was only on a short placement, and I really enjoyed this as it helped me to develop as an engineer. The only thing that I did not have the chance to do was to directly present my work to the external customer, which would have been nice but I understand why this might not have been possible.

The skills I developed at Arup have already helped me with some of my project work at university, and I learnt valuable lessons about an industry which I am passionate about being a part of in the future. It is not just the technical skills that I managed to acquire, but also management and communication skills that are valuable in all areas. The amount of skills that I managed to learn and develop at Arup were thanks to the varied work I was able to do, and the environment in which I was working

I thought there was a great environment in the office. It was environment which encouraged collaboration between engineers of different disciplines, and it managed to be very friendly but at the same time focused on productivity and high quality work. The open environment meant that I got to talk to the majority of people in the office, which made the experience even more enjoyable.

There was such a large amount of project work happening at Arup that it did not seem vital to have the whole internship fully structured. When I arrived one of the tasks I was set to do was already organised, but I managed to complete this in the first couple of the weeks and spent the rest of my placement doing work that was not originally planned out.

The employees within the company were always happy to spend some time with me to help me learn new skills, and I was invited to a number of training sessions during my placement. I was surprised by that large amount of training opportunities I had whilst there considering that I was only there for about a month.

This was one of the things I was most impressed about. It was clear that Arup was a company that I would really enjoy going back and working for in the future. I am excited by the prospect of working with multi-disciplinary teams of engineers, and this is something that working at Arup would give me the opportunity to do. I would really enjoy going back to work for Arup.

There were only three of us on an internship at the Manchester office, but we were still able to do a number of interesting things during the short time that we were there. It was also good to be able to socialise with a number of the graduates there, and there seemed to be a lively social scene amongst the graduates there.

Being in the centre of Manchester, the accommodation I was staying in was not the cheapest. However, I am studying in central London so I am used to it!

The nightlife in Manchester seemed pretty good, although I only had a couple of opportunities to experience it first hand! However, the graduates all seemed pretty happy about the nightlife and the things to do in the area, and I imagine living in a city in Manchester must mean a better nightlife than out in the countryside

I wasn't really there long enough to get a good idea of this, but there seemed like there was plenty to do in ones free time