During my final year of university, I wasn’t sure what engineering specialty I wanted to end up in and was looking for an opportunity to try different things to help figure that out. The Meggitt programme stood out to me because of the flexible nature of the programme; the vast product range means that graduates can trial several interests or technical specialties, even a non-technical placement. The small number of intakes meant that the graduate steering committee could really personalise the experience for each of us. The length of each placement is ideal as well, long enough to really get involved in a project, make an impact and deliver something.
The best thing for me is the amount of support available. As part of the programme, we all have a business mentor as well as a professional development mentor, who both support in different aspects of my growth ensuring I’m getting the right opportunities and work but are also genuinely great people to talk to. In addition to this, I have a placement manager as well as the graduate programme coordinator that I can talk to at any time. The steering committee for the programme is invested in our wellbeing and are accessible despite being senior leaders in the business. The biggest source of support however, is the graduate community within Meggitt – this is a fantastic network, cohorts past and present are always eager to help in any way they can, and always eager to socialise. This greatly eases the challenges that come with frequent relocation.
I did my first placement at our composites site in Stevenage. I worked with different teams across the site from manufacturing engineering to microwave design. During this placement I learned a lot of things from programming and CAD Design to preparing proposal documents to support commercial bids.
My second placement was based in Bristol, working as a project engineer in additive manufacturing of thermal management systems. This was an exciting opportunity to work in a small-business environment, where things move very quickly, not unlike a start-up. The nature of the small team meant I got involved with so much more beyond my original job description whilst getting to be part of an exciting new technology.
My third rotation was at our HQ in Ansty Park. I was part of the central analysis team and completed a CFD thermal analysis project, alongside being a project engineer for a product acceptance test rig approval program following the site move.
In my current and final placement I am working in site quality, investigating historic test failures with an aim to reduce the cost of poor quality through repeated rework.
Best moment so far would be seeing the first cohort of diverse interns on their first day at work in the business who were hired through a UK-wide diverse recruitment initiative that I brought to the attention of internal stakeholders. It has been incredible to see something that started off as a thing I saw on LinkedIn to seeing it made reality in our business. Experiencing the excitement of the interns and knowing what this opportunity means to them has been second to none.
