Production Steering Intern Review

I very much enjoyed working at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, it is a great company with amazing products and English heritage. However, I didn't enjoy living in Chichester at 21 years old and I would recommend trying to live with other placement students, not university students. Chichester is very quite and too far from any big cities.

I felt a little undervalued given how much work we did as interns. A lot of the technical work that I completed e.g.VBA and CAD, could not be done by most of my department and yet it was just expected that tasks were completed without mistakes and in a timely manner. Although, there was a good work ethic overall.

My first manager was very good - we had weekly one to one meetings, he managed my task list and even ran tutorials of process engineering topics such as PFMEA (9/10). However, he moved departments in October and after that I didn't have a manager, which meant that I had no personal meetings or guidance from october onwards. I also received no formal training on any software, I was expected to learn them myself (1/10).

At first I wasn't busy at all and often had afternoons with nothing to do. But as the year went on and the colleagues in my department started to trust me I gained more and more work. By the end of the placement I was so busy I could easily have done loads hours of overtime.

Again, the responsibility grew as the year went on. You are trusted with the cars and trusted to do your job properly. You are responsible for looking after the new interns and in some cases helping to choose the new interns. The responsibility does depend on your job role and the department you are placed in (e.g. some departments look after cars).

I study Chemical Engineering but my placement was in manufacturing and mechanical engineering so there wasn't too much overlap in terms of my degree content. The main thing I learned that I wouldn't otherwise from chem eng was how to use CAD. On reflection, the most important thing was learning how to work every day 9-5 in a leading company.

The general atmosphere in the office was one of hard work, but you are not expected to work long ours - most people work hard during the day and then leave on time. Most people in the office are very friendly and helpful and the same goes for the rest of the company.

I would say that overall, the internship was fairly well organised. The start was very good, with a talk through the history of the company and a drive in one of the cars. They have loads of interns every year so the company are well practiced and this also provides an opportunity to get to know people in the same position.

I received no formal training, which I thought was poor. I learned from the old interns teaching me or I learned on the job. I do feel like the company was getting a very good deal - cheap labour from top universities. Some interns get to go on trips - I went on a day trip to Mini Oxford.

Future prospect are very good if you want to stay within the company and in fact = many of my department were former interns, including two Grads. You still have to go through the application process if you want to come back but you are at a huge advantage compared to those who didn't complete an internship.

There was loads of other interns and occasionally we would go for drinks/nights out. However, there is only really one bar in Chichester so most interns would return home or to their university town on a weekend. It could be very boring if you decided to stay in Chichester for a weekend.

The area is very expensive because it is a posh town on the south coast of England - £5 pints at most of the pubs. It is also quite expensive to travel to any near cities - 1hr 45mins and £25 on the train to London, 30 mins to Portsmouth and 1 hr to Brighton or Southampton.

The nightlife was absolutely terrible - there was one club that closed at 2am on a Saturday and the uni is tiny and doesn't really have any nightlife, except for the Wednesday night socials at the union that closes at midnight. Do not come here for the nightlife.

There aren't really that many work related activities as most employees life away from Chichester and commute. I played 5 a side football, but we organised that ourselves. There is a Rolls-Royce cricket team but I couldn't play due to Coronavirus and I did join an external football club. Rolls-Royce has very good links to Goodwood so there is opportunity for activities there.