Community Energy Design Engineer Review

I was on an engineering placement but I only rarely got the chance to do actual engineering work. As a result, I ended up doing menial and repetitive work on spreadsheets or work on non-engineering projects because my team was understaffed, despite arranging several meetings with my manager about giving me more engineering work.

Constantly had to ask to be given any work to do, which had me questioning why they hired me in the first place. Would occasionally be given tasks to do only to later realise someone else had done it before, or the work I produced was not going to be used by anyone.

My manager was easily accessible and it was easy to arrange a meeting with him to discuss my progress. However, I did not feel like those supervising me were invested in my learning or my professional progression. I was not given enough to do by my manager and thus felt like I was being under utilised.

It varied from period to period. For about half of my placement, my workload was very comfortable (not too much and not too little), but for the other half, I had a very low workload.

I was given some responsibility to draft documents for clients, but that was only on rare occasions. On several occasions, I was tasked with things that I would later discover was already done by another team member. Overall, I would have preferred to be given more responsibility and could have handled way more than I was given.

The skills I learned during this placement were more transferable skills rather than engineering skills. I did not get to do much engineering during my placement,however, I did learn a lot of transferable skills like time-management and improved my written communication. It also taught me how to ask for help when I am struggling, as well as gave me an insight into working for a large corporate company.

Most of my team were very friendly people and cared for each other's well-being. My team's manager was also a very nice and respectful person. I was however the youngest in my team by far, so it did make socialising a bit of a challenge. I did not feel particularly pressured during my placement, in a positive way.

I did not feel like my placement was given enough structure at all. I was given work that my manager did not have time to do, rather than there being a set plan for what I aim to achieve from the placement. Around 4 months after I started my placement, I developed placement objectives which helped direct my work, but overall it required more structure.

I had several meetings with my manager to develop placement objectives. I had made a list of all the skills I wished to develop, but then I was not given much support to work on developing those skills. I did however attend training sessions with the rest of my team which taught me about industry standards, regulations and technology we would be working with.

Within a few months of starting my placement, E.ON announced the 500 job cut. Then later on in my placement, the undergraduates were informed there would be no fast-track to the grad-scheme and some grad-schemes were eliminated. With several restructures occurring and the business trying to cut its losses, I doubt the job security at E.ON.

There was nothing to do around the office at all. But it was close enough to Nottingham where the Nightlife is reasonably okay,

Nottingham has a great music and arts scene so there was plenty of opportunities to go to gigs, exhibitions, and explore hobbies. There were many workshops and classes around the city for a multitude of activities like dance, writing and photography. There were also several climbing centres in the city. Plenty to do.