Mechanical Engineer Summer Placement Review

I have really enjoyed my time at Centrica, a very friendly and welcoming culture. Especially as I was relocated for my placement. I felt I was left to make as much of the placement as I wanted with exposure to the areas that I have voiced an interest in.

The scheme is well structured, each intern has to set out there objectives with the aid of their managers for the time they are there. This means you have clearly defined goals that are there to benefit the company, not menial irrelevant tasks to keep you busy. As a result, the work you are doing is taken seriously by your colleagues and you are able to contribute to the company.

You have three main points of contact to begin with before you develop relationships within the company which you may wish to use for guidance. The graduate team, a graduate buddy and you line manager. Your manager is an extremely useful tool, obviously as a manager he is a busy person, so make the most of your time with him/her. In my case, I was left to interpret the work how I wanted and could ask for advise when or if I needed it, a scenario which gave me the flexibility I wanted.

It varies, some days are busier than others. But as I mentioned you have a few large projects that are running throughout your time at Centrica, so you should always have things to do. And if not, there are plenty of people you can go to asking for work.

The work was quite challenging, I wasn't technically pushed that much, but I think that was the nature of working within Operations. Some work was a required action of the company and therefore carried importance, the rest of the work was still of use to either the team or the company. If you impress from the beginning, you will get more responsibility.

This was one of the best aspects of the internship for me. I voiced my areas of interest and they were developed as a result of this. I expressed an interest in working offshore and as a result I was put through a weeks worth of training, and sent of shore for a period. This will definitely help me in industry looking forward. I would say the skills I developed will help me working within an organisation or industry, but not as much with my degree.

A very friendly culture exists in the office, I got on very well with everyone I worked with. However, my office only has 7 desks in it, and at times was either empty or almost empty. I thought this was good at times, as you are able to get a lot of work done - I worked in one of the smaller rooms in the building, most offered large floor plans of desks.

The placement was well organised, with defined targets through my time. As well as this varies training or development events were set up for all the interns across the UK. These were very beneficial and made sense during our time (ie presentation training before our final presentation). On arrival however, the work was quite slow to start, and days were wasted sorting out administrative things.

The company allowed me to take a week off for an external offshore training at my request as well as some internal training modules that were set up. The offshore training I consider myself to be very lucky to achieve. Not many summer placements would be given the training or opportunity to go offshore by there company - this was a big positive for me.

The graduate scheme offered here is very appealing and is something I hope to be invited on to. The company offers a 4 year scheme rotating through 4 different areas of the company. Centrica is a huge organisation and allows for many opportunities. However, the company has just reviewed its strategy and therefore is experiencing some change, this may be considered good or bad depending on where you want to work within the organisation

Only 1 other intern, who I lived with. Amongst the others in the office there was a friendly and social atmosphere. We played football on thursday, went out for drinks and exerienced the town etc. Although, being in Heysham, a lot of employees would leave the area at the weekends and go visit family/ friends meaning its a bit quieter. Social or sporting events are put on time to time by the company for the interns across the UK which are a lot of fun, but can be a long journey South if you are based up North.

Centrica paid for my accomodation. Lancaster is not overly expensive, nothing compared to London, what I am used to. The bars and clubs dont rip you off, but there are a couple of fancy places if you want to spend more.

Not fantastic, Lancaster would be great during the year with 2 universities near by. But during the summer the nights are quiet except for Friday and Saturday, which arent that busy. Everything is very close to each other in the town though, which is convenient. There are a lot more bars than clubs (which I liked) some of which are nice and some of which are the complete opposite.

Yes, the company sets up a charity challenge, where all interns are split into groups and tasked with raising money for Shelter. We volunteered, as well as setting up fancy dress days, games days etc. A lot to get involved with. As well as that, there were some social or sporting events set up. Beyond that, there was not much to do in Lancaster apart from the basic things. The lake district is very close however, which is definitely worth a visit if you like trecking or cycling.