Research and Development Placement Student Review

I enjoyed the placement a lot. The placement scheme is well established and has a lot of students on it due to the size of the company meaning that there is support networks in place and also a lot of other students your age to chat to and make friends. There is also the Young Professionals which is a group of apprentices, placements and graduates that organize professional development activities as well as socials. You are given real work that genuinely makes a difference to the company which makes it rewarding. You change departments after 6 months which is also good because you get to experience two different positions within the company and it gives you a better idea of what you may want to do in the future.

You are valued by colleagues and you are a real member of the team. All of the colleagues are used to having a placement and will help you out by including you in meetings and giving formal and informal training to make sure that you can do your job well. You aren't just there to make cups of tea or to input data, you become a valuable member of the team

You will have regular desk reviews with your line manager/supervisor to review your workload and if you have any problems or issues. You can also join the iMechE MPDS scheme which is your first step to becoming chartered. You are assigned an MPDS tutor/supervisor who is an iMechE chartered engineer and they help you write the reports that you upload to the iMechE website that counts towards you professional development and, in turn, your chartership.

Initially, when you first start, you don't tend to be too busy. This will be common across all placements as you will be starting to get settled in and learning the processes, software, completing training and learning whose the right person to speak to about certain tasks. When you are up and running, you can be very busy if you ask for the work. There is usually plenty of work to go around so, if you feel like you're not busy or you don't have enough work, you can easily let your supervisor or someone from your team know and they will assign you some work to do.

During my placement I was given a lot of responsibility in both of my rotations within the company. I was given the responsibility to design test parts and also to get them manufactured for a very urgent issue in my first rotation. During my second rotation, I was given the responsibility to build a tool to track certain information that's of interest to the team that will be used after I leave.

The skills I have developed through experience and formal/informal training will assist me in my degree studies greatly. Applying actual engineering knowledge in a real world situation helped me to understand the content I have learnt whilst at university and it has also helped me to develop important, fundamental engineering skills such as root cause analysis. I also developed very important professional skills such as how to conduct myself in the workplace, "soft skills" such as written and verbal communication and team work skills. These are skills that will benefit me after university greatly.

The atmosphere in the office is good. It's productive but also relaxed due to the flexi-time that is offered with this position. Because of the flexi-time, it tends to be quite quiet on a Friday afternoon. Some teams also organize team socials and have team challenges within the team such as step challenges or building challenges.

The placement is well organised and set up. Caterpillar is experienced with the on-boarding process for placements and graduates as they do it every year. They also send out an information pack with information about Peterborough as well as contact information for current placements/graduates to ask questions. As well as that, the pack includes contact information of other placements so you can sort out accommodation with other placements. There's also a meet and greet day before you start but it was too close to the start date to use it to decide who you want to live with. The IT transition could be smoother but I started my placement right in the middle the company switching software packages which could have contributed to this.

You are given formal and informal training. When you start you initially have 2 days of training, including company history, health and safety (including a VR activity) and a couple of other things. There's also online training that you have to complete. You can also attend more formal training throughout the year. As well as that, you get informal training from members of your team to help you with your work.

Future employment prospects are appealing with Caterpillar. They offer very good financial incentives to work for them, including a bonus and the share scheme where they contribute when you buy shares and yearly pay rises. The company itself has been good to work for and there's Job security given the size of the company. Off highway machines and engines are always going to be needed, whether in electrical or internal combustion form, as well.

There's a good social scene amongst the placements and graduates. There is the "Young Professionals" group which consists of Apprentices, Placements, Graduates and people who are in full time work but came from one of the schemes. There is a committee that organizes social activities that you can join in with to meet new people and there's a 5-a-side football team you can join.

The cost of living and socializing is pretty average for the area. I paid approximately £400-450 in rent (including bills) sharing with other placements. There are 2 spoons and an o'neils in the town centre as well as some other places that are pretty cheap to go drinking like chain pubs etc.

Peterborough is not a student city so the nightlife is not amazing. There is one main club and there is a smaller club and a bar/club. Those are your main options for going out clubbing. There are a lot of pubs and bars however and some of them have like music etc on certain nights.

There were opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work such as sport and social activities that were mainly organised by the young professionals group. You can also find out relatively easy who plays which sports on site and ask them to come along and they're usually pretty accomodating.