Environmental Science Summer Intern Review

I enjoyed the topics I worked on within the discipline. I felt that they were directly in line with the aims and ambitions of the business and I wasn’t given work that wouldn’t be used or have an impact. I worked with people from all over the world and was very pleased that the internship wasn’t cancelled despite what’s going on. I was able to the entire internship virtually and was given support to do this.

I felt valued as a colleague overall. With COVID it’s quite hard to get a sense of the office environment and there’s no one around to bother with questions. I was welcomed by the team prior to my placement starting, but it was hard to keep in contact with them if I wasn’t directly working with them on a project. My supervisors constantly highlighted the value of the work I was doing. I think working virtually is definitely hard for everyone and everyone was just trying to get through it so I may not have spoke to some colleagues as much as I would have in an office environment.

On the majority of my projects I was given good guidance and support. Sometimes the projects I was given were not scoped out well so it entailed more work than they had anticipated for the 6 week period. Multiple supervisors for projects also confused things a bit, but I got used to it. I definitely had to use my initiative to find information, data and send out lots of emails. I think slightly more support could have been given in some areas.

I was extremely busy on a daily basis. From week 2 of the internship I had a very full diary with back to back virtual meetings. Sometimes this was good and it was great to be networking and learning from so many individuals, however this left little time for actual work, another thing that comes with virtual working. This required a lot of time management on my part and discussing strategies with my supervisors as the meetings were necessary.

I did not have responsibility for a lot of things at all. My projects were mainly research based, but one of them was a time saving project which had real impacts if it proved to be successful, which it did. I think this was the nature of the environmental discipline in the fact that you won’t be building things or designing things, but more analysing, testing, researching and modelling. I think real responsibility comes in where you are an environmental adviser to a region/asset, however this level of responsibility is probably way too much for an intern!

I gained a lot of knowledge about the oil and gas industry, how the business is organised, some chemical engineering concepts in practice and learnt about the environmental implications of oil and gas operations and the measures taken to mitigate these. This has directly helped me in my further studies as it’s informed my choices for some modules and also given me context for theoretical concepts in chemical engineering and HSE. I also further developed time management skills, presentation skills and confidence. These skills look quite different in a purely virtual context!

I worked at home for the entire internship so I have no indication of what this would be like. My interviews took place at the office I would’ve been based at and from what I could tell, the atmosphere was welcoming, calm and people seemed relaxed. Virtually, people were very kind and encouraged me to network with as many people as possible to get the most out of my internship. People weren’t just interested in my internship, they were also interested in my background, goals and interests. My score is based off of the fact that I was working from home the whole time.

I think the IT team did really well to get our virtual desktops set up prior to starting our internships. I did not have any technical issues, but I also did not require specialist software whereas other interns did and struggled to get things working. I received my internship projects, supervisors and goals 1-2 weeks prior to my start date so it was good to have time to think about it and generate some questions. I also attended the bi-annual team meeting of the team I was based in for my internship a month prior to my start date as my line manager wanted to give me more of an opportunity to learn about the wider environmental science discipline.

There was a great learning platform that had a wealth of information in there ranging from very technical topics to things such as ethics and teamwork. We had access to this throughout the internship, however I had limited time to make use of the resource. If we had been in the office, I believe we would have received an additional allowance on top of our salary for living in London and lunch meals were also paid by the company.

Future employment with the company is very attractive as new aims and ambitions were released earlier this year so the direction the company is going in is very exciting. Bp is an excellent company and they also offer very competitive salaries and benefits. The types of projects you get to work on and the problems that you could help to solve have really big impacts. At the end of the graduate scheme, there are initiatives put in place to help you get where you want in the business depending on job availability.

There was a social events committee for interns and they organised weekly events towards the end of the internship which was good, but attendance was limited as it was crunch time for a lot of people’s projects. There were also intern families with the parents being graduates within the business. Weekly informal sessions were set up for games and just general chat. It’s quite hard to replicate face to face interaction over a computer so my score is mainly based on that. I’ve heard there is usually an end of internship ball and plenty of socials in normal circumstances.

I was based in London and of course living in London is quite expensive but I lived at home. Going out for food and general travel in London is also very expensive. This is why the company offers an additional London allowance.

I believe there’s lots of nightlife in London, but the internship took place during lockdown. There’s plenty of restaurants, relatively good public transport and lots of places to visit and experience.

There was nothing I could get involved in outside of work. There was a virtual lunchtime yoga class once a week, but that was about it. I think there would have been more options if the internship wasn’t virtual, but I’m not 100% on that.