Process Engineering Degree Apprenticeship Review

As a process engineer apprentice I started off working in the Pilot Plant on the Macclesfield site, shadowing the pilot plant technicians and learning how a chemical plant operates. I am currently on a secondment within the Large Scale Laboratories to widen my breath of experience of drug manufacturing and will continue to rotate to get as much experience within the chemical engineering sector as possible. There are many things my job could entail from scaling up of processes to a lot of process safety, helping out commissioning of engineering equipment and even helping maintain the pilot plant!

I have learnt a plethora of skills as an apprentice even though I have been here for less than two years. Some of which include professionalism, time management, project management, networking and plenty more to come! Astrazeneca and process engineering is general has and provides for oppurtunities with such a varied skillset

I enjoy my programme and am very glad I personally switched from full time university to a degree apprenticeship. The boost in my career and the opportunities this apprenticeship has given me is endless and I feel I will have the building blocks for a successful career by the end of my five years here

The apprenticeship was initially not so well structured regarding work based learning requirements we had to meet and there was quite a bit of confusion on how to actually achieve the apprenticeship standard component of the course. However after a allocated WBL advisor was given this did change and now secondments and placements can be arranged to help us get his breadth of experience which is good. It can be challenging to balance the degree, job and apprenticeship standard (WBL) all at once though and it has proven difficult for me at times

My employer has been generally great, compared to full time university I have a lot more support and get a lot more opportunities. I have a manager, mentor, buddy, WBL advisor and university tutor to assist me with all my work and do it is a very thorough system.

Strathclyde as a university is a good university. However the workload is extremely overwhelming at times and although they provide lectures a lot of it is purely self taught and barely any 1:1 contact time with tutorials which makes it hard. The modules are also not the best sometimes with the content being too hard and not well taught. We get one day a week to study however this is never enough. I find myself studying most evenings and a lot of weekends and feel this shouldn't be the case at all

It helps a decent amount. However they are quite different I maybe use 25% of what I learn in my role

There is the apprentice community that hosts apprentice events. However, these events do not help having a social life outside of work and I have not found them beneficial at all.

Yes

Very good company that provide good pay, benefits, endless opportunities and support to anyone who is willing to put the effort in

Learn the company values and have a good range of experiences thought out that relate to these values before attending any interviews. Also have a good work ethic and be a well rounded person in general