Supervisor's Support Manager Review

I really enjoyed the placement. I got to experience a diverse range of situations and be placed in several different roles which really helped me to understand the reality of working in industry.

Everyone I worked with was very welcoming and helpful. Because there have been a lot of graduates/placement students at the company, people are very used to helping you out and are very receptive to questions and helping you with your development.

My supervisor was really good. We met regularly to discuss whether there were other things on the project I wanted to have a go at or whether there was anyone in particular I wanted to work with. He was really helpful in making sure I got the most out of the placement.

In the beginning, I was less busy as it was a big project with a lot of work to do to catch up on understanding what was going on. However, as time went on I was given lots of different things to do and by the end I was incredibly busy on a daily basis.

I was given a reasonable level of responsibility. I had weekly tasks that helped with reporting to the business what was happening on the project. I also had smaller personal projects that were helping with the work directly going on on the project but if I wanted more to do they would always find something, and if I said I couldn't handle something they were always willing to help.

I will be so much better at time management and effective independent working. A lot of the work I did was on my own and so developing research skills was really good. I also think my communication skills improved a lot and this will be really helpful for group projects back at university.

Because I was working on such a big project and we were sharing an office with the contractor, sometimes things could be a bit tense. However, generally my office was a really great place to work. It was a friendly environment and everyone was really focused on the end goal.

The placement was incredibly well set up. Because the business are so used to having graduates and placement students, the whole process was really effective. The only thing I would say was it would be good if the placement students had more of a placement focus as often we were bundled in with the graduates which was sometimes not appropriate.

The company provided a wide variety of skills training such as presentation skills, report writing etc. There was also a lot of basic training such as quality and diversity, health and safety etc, I gained a CSCS card through the company as well as a Sentinel Card. They were also very keen on getting me ICE development objectives signed off and I was really pushed to do this which was good as its something I may not have considered focusing on myself.

The graduate scheme is really well set up so its very appealing to go back and work for the company in the future, particularly as the projects available are so diverse and some of them are so large scale.

The graduate community and TfL is very active and they were very good at including placement students in this. The people in my office were also very sociable. We had monthly drinks, went out for lunch together and generally socialised very well.

I was working in London so socialising was quite expensive. However, I lived at home on the Kent coast and committed in so it was really nice to return from London to the beach every day. I also saved a lot of money on rent as I lived in my family home.

The nightlife in London is very good. My colleagues were all also really nice and provided me with places to stay so I didn't have to try and get home late at night.

TfL had a lot of sports clubs and societies itself such as women in engineering etc. London is good for getting involved in lots of different things too. There are always sports events going on and lots of art and culture events.