Undergraduate Engineer Review

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the placement. Most of the work untaken was interesting as well as challenging. The skills developed throughout the year will be invaluable to my future career. It was also a great way to meet a variety of people.

AgustaWestland employs many students and apprentices which means most people are used to working with them on a daily basis. This means that the work you do is valued by your colleagues as it is expected to be to a high standard.

I found that all my supervisors were very good at giving me support and guidance throughout the year. They were always happy and willing to answer any questions or point you in the right direction if you needed something.

This can varies quite rapidly between departments and even daily. I very rarely had nothing to do but I was fortunate in the fact that my workload was quite constant so I had enough to keep me working without me getting bored or feeling overworked. Whenever I was out of work there was always someone around to ask for something to do. There will be instances when the workload increases due to deadlines etc however these do not occur very often.

I was never for instance asked to run a team but as a member of a team you are given the same amount of responsibility as everyone else. This means they expect you to keep to the high standards of normal employees. So the work you do must abide by the same quality standards of everyone else.

I believe the placement will be a great help to my studies. Not only will I take away a great deal of technical skills, I will also be able to apply many of the skills I have developed (communication, time management) to my future projects.

I was fortunate as I was always in large open plan offices. This meant there were always people around to chat to. It would often get rather quiet when everybody was working, but most people were happy to chat or answer questions throughout the day.

I believe AgustaWestland does a good job of organising the year. Especially with helping you find departments to go to as they know which ones are more acceptive/useful for students.

Not a great deal was invested in the year which is understandable as there is no obligation to come back to the company. Undergraduates get a day long course on presentating a positive professional image which is quite useful but is the only one in the year.

Even if you do the undergraduate year you still have to reapply from scratch for the graduate scheme. This means there is no guarentee however if you get through to an interview I believe if you had done a placement here it would help.

I was very lucky as there were 10 undergraduates on my placement year and we all got on really well. They also have a large intake of graduates every year so there are many people around the same age to socialise with. There are also 2 social groups which organise events and trips which is a good way to do something different and meet new people.

My rent was very cheap, around £80/week but obviously it can vary depending on where abouts you live. Again socialising (bars, cinema, clubs) is fairly standard prices, no where is really that expensive.

Yeovil only has one night club NEO, which is not great. There are quite a few bars which are ok. As with most places though, its normally who your with rather then where you are as we've had a few good nights out in neo.

There are 2 social clubs. One is called AWASA and is run by the apprentices and one is called AWADP and is run by the graduates. They both do a similar sort of thing: organise nights out, trips to the beach, go-karting, theme parks etc and as an undergrad you get invited to both the groups events.