Insights Trusted to get on with it and supported to succeed

The right placement for me

The team I was placed in has a variety of projects going on at any one time. And I had the flexibility to contribute to many of them. I was able to work on projects within Nuclear, Offshore Wind and Oil & Gas.

A genuinely great place to be

Atkins also has a large intake of graduates and placement students every year. So there were plenty of events on the go to help everyone get to know each other. It really made moving to a new city where I didn't know anyone a lot easier.

Supported to achieve what I wanted to

I was assigned a line manager who contacted me several times before my start date. She asked me what I wanted to do on my placement so that she could secure projects I'd be interested in. Throughout my internship, we had regular catchups to discuss my personal development, and see if I was enjoying what I was doing.

Developing as an engineer

The way you interact with your manager in Atkins is different to how I imagined it would be. Aa line manager is not your 'boss' and doesn't usually assign work to you. Instead, they focus their efforts on helping the people they manage with any problems they have and helping them develop as engineers.

Trusted to get on with it

Most of the work was unsupervised, but getting the help I needed was easy. The team promotes collaboration and sharing knowledge.

I learnt so much more than I'd expected.

I gained a lot of interpersonal skills, as well as background knowledge in the nuclear industry. Working in the industry gave me a new appreciation for attention to detail, through tasks like creating calculations to comply with standards. I learnt a great deal about finite element analysis (FEA), specifically using Abaqus. I also gained programming skills in VBA and Python.

The best day of my placement

Probably my final performance review towards the end of my placement. It felt very rewarding to hear positive feedback from colleagues and to be offered a job when I finished University.

A taste of a variety of roles

I conducted finite element analysis on several components for nuclear and offshore wind projects. I was also given the responsibility to create VBA and python scripts to do complex calculations and automate tasks. I also had the opportunity to work within the engineering management team on a large offshore wind project. And I was also entrusted with creating technical notes which were issued to clients.

My favourite role

I thoroughly enjoyed working in the engineering management team within the offshore wind project. There were only three or four of us working on it at any one time. We had a lot of work to get done, the challenge really made me feel like I was a valuable member of the team!

The experience helped me into my dream career.

Being able to spend a year at Atkins before finishing my degree allowed me to picture what working here would be like in the future. Being offered a job before my final year took a lot of pressure off when I got back to uni. I'm now a Graduate Mechanical Engineer within the Design & Analysis Team, which sits within Nuclear Assets – and I love what I do.

I discovered an unexpected thing about myself.

I never thought I would be interested in programming. Working at Atkins has opened that world to me, and now it's what I spend the majority of my workday doing, and I really enjoy it.

Thinking about your future? Check out our placement program, here.