Year In Industry Civil Engineer Review

Great team to work with, varied work activities, opportunity to experience the goings on across the breadth of the company and London as a whole.

Really friendly team, met up with the Graduates occasionally, generally in a pub!

Had major problems at first due to being the first ever YINI Civils, but once a friend of a friend put me in touch with a Supervisory Civil Engineer, things improved massivly.

It did vary a lot on a day to day basis, was occasionally run off my feet but it was enjoyable, when ran out of office work to do, was always welcome on site.

Again it varied, but I did get quite a lot of high-profile documents to produce & review, gained great working relationships with our contractors working across the network.

Great experience, valuable insight to an industry I would not have been able to gain any other way. TfL has a VERY wide array of training courses to attend, both on their e-learning site and their training centre at Ashfield House.

Very friendly, chilled & relaxed, occasionally hectic (especially on a Friday afternoon!). Could listen to music all day if wanted to, opportunity to come to work in jeans everyday if intended to be out on site.

Very much ad-hoc. I originally only applied for the Summer Placement Scheme, but was phoned up about a week after the initial rejection with the offer of doing a year with them instead. I was origionally working on a project which was yet to apply for planning permission and so there was no real plan behind the work a was doing in my placement. I was able to transfer projects to one currently under construction across the width of the network and was better put to use with the subsequent team.

Offered training, talks, review and even interview feedback. Opportunities to acquire industry recognised qualifications, was able to use the experience gained as the basis for signing-off the ICE Initial Professional Development Objectives, counting towards chartership with the Institution.

You have to re-apply for their graduate scheme once placement is over, but having done the placement is an advantage. Currently attempting to return for a summer placement, it's difficult to know who has the authority to authorise this.

All those on the YINI placements as well as those on apprenticeships joined on the same week as the graduates. There was a good social scene up until Xmas, after which the regular pub-trips dissipated, That said, there were still opportunities to meet-up throughout the year at the lunchtime seminars/evening lectures.

London is a very expensive city to go out in. The Staff Oyster and Network Rail Season Ticket Loan and reimbursement did make a massive contribution to extra disposable income, but still at 5 quid a pint, your money doesn't go all that far!

There were several pubs on the corner of our offices, and one local, where you were sure to find someone from our team on almost any night of the week.

Quite a few opportunities, socialising with other placement students/graduates, office events and many retirement parties/leaving dos to attend.