Manufacturing Intern Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my internship, being given a variety of objectives that allowed me to gain a broad understanding of the departments role in the company. Working for a large company can be quite daunting at ¡rst, however the department I was working in felt relaxed and I had no troubles settling in.

There was a large volume of work entering the department and for the ¡rst month of the internship, everyone was busy preparing for demonstrations at Farnborough International Airshow. Despite this, everyone in the team was more than willing to provide support and assistance, and recognised the value of my activities. I de¡nitely felt like a valued member of the team.

There was a strong level of guidance and support provided by my line manager. Almost daily sessions were organised towards the ¡nal few weeks of the internship to review progress on the assigned objective. Objectives were reviewed twice during the internship allowing you to gain feedback on your work efforts.

The tasks I were assigned required engagement with the wider team. At the start due to the team's engagement with demonstrations at FIA, there was little work that could be carried out without their input. Therefore the ¡rst few weeks were spent getting up to grasp. Gradually the workload ramped up, and I felt more productive as the weeks went by as more resources became available.

I was given an appropriate level of responsibility given my limited understanding of manufacturing, coming from a design-focussed background. This is to be expected for an intern joining any company for the ¡rst time with limited engineering experience. However after a few health and safety brie¡ngs I was given more independence to complete a task that involved working on the shop ¢oor.

Some of the tasks assigned to me were shared with another intern and therefore required a good teamworking approach to deliver on the objective. Engaging with the wider team has developed my communication skills and allowed me to gain a good understanding of the technologies involved within the manufacturing department.

I felt like it was a very productive but relaxed environment to work in. Everyone was extremely friendly, and never to busy to talk with you and seemed genuinely interested to talk with you. I was situated with a substantial number of interns and graduates therefore it was a very sociable atmosphere.

The internship seems to have a good team managing it from the early careers side. A lot of other interns said that initially there were problems with IT however I myself luckily did not experience this. Other than that I believe there could be improvements made in terms of giving objectives to the interns at the start, rather than a few weeks in. Also helping them to organise shop ¢oor visits will allow interns to gain a greater understanding of the manufacturing principles involved in airframe assemblies.

My line manager was very attentive to my personal development, organising two reviews throughout the placement to provide feedback on progress made with the assigned objectives. There weren't any speci¡c training courses to be taken that would have helped me development, however this is understandable when the placement lasted only 12 weeks.

The graduate scheme seems to be very structured and would allow a breadth of experience to be gained over the two year time period. I believe it looks very appealing and would contribute greatly to my personal development. There are opportunities to work on exciting new cutting edge technologies, and there seemed to be a great deal of work entering the department.

Most of the interns lived in Preston city centre therefore there was ample opportunities to socialise. There was a large amount of people living in the same halls and you were most likely put together with other BAE interns when organising accomodation, when mentioning your employer. All in all, it was a great opportunity to meet new people from lots of different universities.

Accomodation was bills inclusive for £88/week which was considerably cheaper than Bristol accomodation, but most places would be. There was plenty of supermarkets nearby within walking distance like Aldi therefore you could live quite cheaply. Nights out were always cheaper compared to other places. As I used my car, I couldn't compare what bus ticket prices were like however most people car shared to work as it was much more convenient.

Preston city centre has a pretty decent night life especially towards start of September when more students move in, so it can get a lot more lively. It's much cheaper night out than other places and the pubs/bars are pretty decent as well. It was pretty good for what preston is.

Not much stuff really to do apart from drinking in preston; however it's location is pretty good as it's not too far from Manchester and the sea side like blackpool or Lytham st annes. If your used to big cities with lots to do then you might possibly be disappointed.