Health and Safety and FES Placement Student Review

- Monitoring and investigating accidents and near misses, carrying out risk assessments and implementing improvements. - Sending out safety messages - Working with all the departments to implement and maintain the Faurecia excellence standards. - Working on plant improvement projects in multifunctional teams. - Creating and using excel files to track key performance indicators. - Creating presentations on various topics to showcase the plant's work to Group as well as too present proposals to the management team. - Helping prepare for both Faurecia and external audits.

- Improved communication skills : better understanding of who to keep in the loop and how to deal with difficult people - Time management : lots of tasks of varying lengths to complete simultaneously. - Crisis resolution : problems caused by lack of manning required office staff assistance. - Teamwork : working on projects in multifunctional teams and also completing the charity challenge with the other students to raise money for charity. - Analytical skills : analysing data produced from our systems to validate it.

As I was in a two man team I was given a lot of responsibility, and was able to be involved in the majority of my departments work. I also had a lot of autonomy to both get involved in existing projects that appealed to me and do research into my own interests within the plant. As well as the day to day tracking of data, I was given several projects over the year, such as developing file systems for tracking efficiency and hazard hunting and analysing our waste streams.

I received a lot of both guidance and support from my manager who I worked closely with, he was very approachable and willing to help. With regards to the rest of the plant it was a mixed bag, some people were very helpful and patient and others the complete opposite. It was definitely the case that some people seemed to have a fundamental lack of understanding of what their role entailed and therefore adopted the least helpful stance possible. From my uni there was minimal support, especially given the fee, just the one teams meeting in the year.

I think that there was a negative feel to the plant, COVID was definitely a factor, but there was also a lot of issues caused by lack of manning on the shop floor and the importance placed on not stopping the customer over everything else. The pressures of that situation did permeate throughout the plant. The charity challenge, which the students competed in throughout the year did allow the students to meet up and relax to some extent.

Despite the problems with the plant, I do think it was a good opportunity. Undoubtedly a lot of work, but definitely scope to get involved with a variety of projects. As far as the question goes, overall I don't think I enjoyed it, maybe if there had been more socialising outside of work it would have been a different story, but due to COVID this was limited. By the end of the placement I was definitely feeling that a lot of what I did didn't really matter given the plant's situation and this meant the work wasn't particularly rewarding.

No

If I was being cynical I would say don't apply. But actually you do learn a lot, and if you want to go into the automotive industry the experience is invaluable. I also think any placement is worth it just for the experience of actually working 9-5. (Or 8-5 in Faurecia's case with a half day on Friday). There's not much advice to give other than apply and make sure to go turn up for the interview, I can tell you that lots of people don't.