Student Engineer Review

General assistance to the HS2 structures team with calculations, drawings and other design documentation, often in a checking capacity. This involves marking up drawings, report writing, and conducting risk assessments. My role also involves attending meetings and managing my own personal professional development.

I have learnt a lot about concrete reinforcement although it must be noted that I haven't studied this in depth so far at university. I've had the chance to improve digital skills using Python and Excel. Working in the office environment for the first time has helped develop communication/ interpersonal skills.

I was allowed to carry out checks independently with my work being checked afterwards by my management. I feel that there weren't many occasions where I was given the chance to produce any calculations/ drawings from scratch which I hoped I would be able to do. I feel that this is in part due to spending the whole year resourced onto a project which was coming to a close and had little work left.

I felt like whenever I needed any help there was always somebody in my team that could give me that help. Tasks were explained well and people were mostly understanding if I wasn't sure about something.

Most of the time was spent working from home. Although the support was still there when I needed it, this environment made it a lot more difficult to learn. General atmosphere was good, all team members got on well and socialised with each other. My team possess a wide range of technical excellence and clearly have a passion for engineering.

My placement has given me an insight into what it's like to work as an engineer, and allowed me to develop technical and soft skills. Both the company and the project hold a high level of prestige and that experience will be invaluable for me going forward. Despite this I feel that I could have got more out of my placement. I would have liked the company to have shown more trust in me.

Yes

My advice would be to take the most of every opportunity that comes your way, whether that be attending training sessions, site visits or networking events. Make sure you are asking plenty of questions so you can get the most out of the experience as you can.