Undergraduate Placement Engineer Review

My role involves overseeing and managing the timescales, cost and quality of projects in the clean water industry. My daily tasks include negotiations with contrators at various stages of the project life cycle, and formulating, devising a scopes of work and subsequently writing contract documents such as Works Orders.

I have learnt a lot on the commercial side of engineering, particularly the implications of certain clauses within the NEC contract and when Compensation Events can and should be raised. Severn Trent is in the process of developing a NEC training course; I am planning to enrol as soon as it's ready.

The work is definitely good experience no matter what discipline of engineering you want to go into; as a Project Manager you are given a top down view of how different moving parts of a project fit together and proivdes an insight into how different type of engineers interact and work together. The team I'm working with is very supportive and they give me a fair amount of responsbility on projects.

My programme was structured fairly well in theory, but Covid restrictions have made events like inductions and in-person training very difficult. That said, the immediate team and my manager put a lot of effort into making me aware of Severn Trent systems and methodology, and give me responsbility in projects so that I feel like my actions have effects in the eventual project outcome.

My manager is very supportive and acts as my mentor for most day to day tasks. Although he's very busy he sets aside time everyday to allow me to escalate issues or concerns that I have with my projects. As an engineer with many years of experience he always gives sound advice on the what next steps to proceed with.

I mainly receive support from my line manager, but as he is trained as a chemical engineer and I am a civil engineer, he cannot act as the Mentor under my IPD for my Chartership with the ICE. My mentor is a Civil Engineer from the Waste department of the business but he is very busy and cannot always give me time. He has given me guidance in terms of what to upload to my IPD but has yet to approve my evidence.

Yes, I think my day-to-day tasks are similar to that of my colleagues so it will prepare me for when I graduate university and go into a career role. As a project manager there is only so much theory that I can apply since most of what I learnt at University is design based, but an understanding of the theory definitely helps me understand project motivations and demand, as well as investigating possible solutions at an optioneering stage. I defintely feel like I know much more about the industry after working at Severn Trent, in particular the importance of contract and contract documents.

Covid restrictions has made this difficult, but the company has made efforts to do remote events, such as a comedy and karaoke night. There are also volunteering oppurtunities that i am looking to involved myself in, for example the Community Champions scheme, in which we go to a local community for a couple of days and improve the local environment (eg. by cleaning up rubbish) or more focussed on directly helping those in the community.

Yes

The role will provide you with a lot of experience in the water indsutry and you will be exposed to a very wide range of projects. From Project Managers persepctive you can see how different disciplines of engineering work together to form a cohesive project and guide that through to success. Severn Trent has provided me with plenty of connections not just within the company but in the wider industry, in particular with contractors.

The interviewing/assessment centre process is not particularly unique, but I would suggest not drinking lots of coffee beforehand as you will have to present a Powerpoint on your strengths according to the aptitude tests that were the first step of the application process. My interviewer made me feel very calm (not sure if I was just lucky) and asked a lot of follow up questions when he wanted a particular answer.