From University to the Working World: Josiah’s Project Engineering Placement

My job role is Project Engineering. Project engineering is sort of a bridge between project management and engineering. Currently I am helping further develop a new scheme the company is adopting, that is a project master specification or PMS for short. A PMS is a document that will essentially hold all the design and instrument specifications that a company will ask Atlas Copco to provide on the compressor they have requested to be built. The PMS can be used by many other departments for example the purchasing team can use the PMS to refer to what components need to be bought. The PMS can also be used to give certain documents to suppliers that require specific details for what they need to provide to us. Speaking to our manager Koen Hillebrand, he broke down other aspects he would like me to help further develop and work on. Some of them being working on the Norsok datasheets which will store all the different parts that are used on projects and will store the tag number of each part. This will help many people to find very specific equipment that are required for each project, this can also help the other project engineers when they need to fill out a PMS, they can just type what they need, and all the details will be there.

On the assessment day I was initially very nervous and found the experience daunting but after meeting the employees they all made me feel very welcome. Everyone was friendly and the day was quite relaxed and stress free. The interview at the end was laid back and you were made to feel comfortable. I thought the recruit process as whole was very smooth. The online application process was easy to complete. After the assessment day there was a phone interview with my workplace manager Philip Beaty, which again was also very relaxed. After the final phone interview, the response took a short amount of time, in which I was called and told I had got the job.

Coming from university straight to a working environment was a huge change. It was quite difficult at the start to adjust from having a different schedule each day to working from 9 to 5 each day. However, after the first few days I was able to get into the flow of it, but still haven’t 100% grasped what the complete working life has in store. I would say that from working here that I have furthered my IT skills due to everything be digital, especially working on the PMS I have been able to learn a bit more about how to use Microsoft word and the formatting. Getting to meet a whole load of new people has been a big highlight for me. Meeting other university placement students has been good because we get to work together and we are all working towards a final goal.