Placement Student Procurement Review

From the beginning of the placement, you are given responsibilities. You are partnered with a mentor and are responsible for working through your workbench of materials to purchase. These start with simpler items which are easy to source to get you used to the purchasing process and the products themselves. Throughout your first few months, you are learning what products are and where to get them from regionally. You will be emailing and phoning suppliers and processing orders. You will also be communicating with the site teams to understand what they need and what their deadlines are.

During my placement, I developed my communication skills as I would be speaking to new people every day so I needed to be clear and confident in what I was saying. I also improved my time management skills as I was managing my workload and deadlines which, if missed, could impact others. Furthermore, I gained a lot of knowledge both about how businesses operate and about the civil engineering industry in particular.

Short answer, yes. You are supported at all times and if you make any mistakes there will be someone available to help you fix it. However, you are given responsibility and encouraged to get involved from day one so that you learn more and feel comfortable in the role. I found that having more responsibility helped me learn more and develop more confidence in my decision-making, ultimately leading to more independence.

You have a mentor from your first day who will sit with you and guide you through your daily tasks. You also have your manager and the rest of your team who are also willing to help you. The overall procurement team is very supportive. We were encouraged to hot-desk so that we sat around different people each day giving us more opportunity to learn from each other.

In general, the company culture was very friendly and welcoming. There was a lot of communication within the team and frequent team meetings to encourage discussion and learning from each other.

I enjoyed my placement and I think it has been valuable to my degree course. I think JN Bentley offers a strong programme with lots of opportunities to learn. You aren't sitting in the office every day, there are supplier visits and site visits which enrich your experience.

Yes

Be confident and demonstrate an ability to communicate, the company values communication so make it clear in your interview/assessment centre. The hard skills of the role can be learnt easily but you need a base of clear and confident communication to succeed in the role. You will be speaking to new people everyday so you need it!