Site Engineer Review

The work was challenging, however enjoyable. The tasks varied in siginificance and in duration, and some were less enjoyable than others, and being given significant responsability of some tasks felt brilliant and made me enjoy the placement even more.

I have had 3 summer placements with Laing O'Rourke now, and even from the first placement I have felt like a valued member of the team, with a good working relationship across the range of staff that I worked with and alongside. At my 3rd placement, I no longer felt like a placement student and felt like I was being given the responsability of a graduate, which made me feel extremely valued.

Throughout the placement, no matter the issue and question, I had support from the management and my supervisor. This helped me significantly in my 1st placement, having had little to no experience of a construction site, however the nature of my issues and questions changed and the assistance and guidance proivided in my 3rd year was just as beneficial to me, if not more so.

I was very busy. In my first placement, the level of work I was doing came to me as a suprise, however by the 2nd and 3rd placement, it felt entirely natural and I was doing even more. The amount of work is suitable and enough to keep you busy, however it is exceptionally rare that it is too much to do. The construction industry is a time pressured environment, and this is reflected in your workload as an engineer in such a field.

In my first placement, I had appropriate levels of responsability given to me, given my experience and knowledge of the operations, which increased to a suitable level by the end of the placement. In my 3rd placement, the responsability I was given was brilliant, with responsibility for a range of reasonably significant packages of work

The skills I learnt most in the 3 placements I have had, are more in personal development rather than academic development. I have developed my time-management skills more than anything else which has benefitted me in my academic studies significantly. Next would be my understanding of how the construction process actually works, which has allowed me to get an understanding of the nature of the industry and benefitted me with my academic stuidies by allowing me to envisage how a structure would be actually built that I design / discuss at university. I was also able to go on training courses for other profession specific skills and soft skills, benefitting specific assignments and general interaction with other students during my academic studies.

This varied to a minor degree between the 3 placements I have had, however there has always been a healthy balance between the serious work and critical decisions, and the time for a bit of fun and causal chat with the staff in the office

Each of the 3 placements always had a strong organisation to the entire structure, with 2 sessions where the central team met with the placement students as a whole, with weekly meetings between. Overall, the organisation of the placements has been brilliant.

The nature of the role I had on my placements dictated that internal training was most effective, however my training was both appropriate and would not have been more, maybe even less, effective had a specialist come in or had I gone on a course externally. There were several opportunities to learn about various business functions and develop myself, which I was able to use.

Extremely appealing. They are very competitive within the market and offer a great package with the company. One of the most enticing prospects for myself is their approach to personal development, which I rate above the financial package that they offer which in itself is one of the best that I know of.

For all of my placements, I have not had the opportunity to be social with the other students, however this has been for personal reasons and/or because I was the only placement student at the project, however I know this to be different at other projects with other placement students where a good social scene has been built up between the other placement students.

My first placement was in a remote location so I had to use a B&B for accomodation which was not cheap, however my accomodation has been subsidised throughout the placements, and I feel that the price of the accomodation is not a measure by which to measure the placement or employer.

I am not a particularly sociable person when it comes to nightlife, so cannot comment particularly, however due to the alcohol and drugs laws with working in the construction sectior, the work is relatively prohibitive to nightlife socialising

There were a few opportunities that I was aware of however I understand that there are more than I was actually exposed to, with graduates having the opportunity to engage with schools and universties occasionally, and with institution activities also.