My placement and university experience
For my placement year, I was in the Mechanical Design for Internal Combustion Engine team at Red Bull Powertrains. I started in the Materials team. Then I rotated to more design-based work in the top end team and got to work on projects and release designs for Bottom end and Structures teams when needed. The Materials team involved failure analysis, investigating how parts had failed during testing and creating reports for the business to ensure processes and/or design changes were made to avoid repeat failure. This involved analysing the failed parts using a range of techniques including SEM imaging. The design work I completed was mostly for the Top end team, this covers the valvetrain for the first-ever Red Bull PT V6 engines.
This sounds very cliché, but the people I met over the year helped me understand the level I want to get to and what kind of professional I aspire to be. If you show you are enthusiastic to learn and ask questions, people were very generous to take time out of their day to help me learn and understand the various parts of the business as well as teaching new skills.
The training provided was also great, I was fortunate enough to receive formal training on using the Scanning Electron Microscope, Geometric Dimensioning + Tolerancing, and also NX CAD and FEA.
Overall, the best part of the placement was the satisfaction of releasing a design, then once it was delivered seeing it run on the engine. Seeing all the success of Red Bull Racing from behind the scenes, getting to see the trophies and drivers and talk to people you have watched on TV was awesome.
Personally, I did not find the transition from study to work very difficult. This could have been due to having various jobs between finishing school and throughout uni so my understanding of a work environment was there. Another reason would be the welcoming environment at RBPT, all the managers and colleagues were very welcoming. Most places will have social aspects like 5-a-side or running clubs which I would really recommend getting involved in to help build relationships outside of the workplace. This can then help ‘break the ice’ if you require help from them back at work by naturally taking away any nerves or hesitation to ask a question.
Organisational skills from placement really helped me on my return to university. Having to manage multiple projects and track progress across the projects was a skill I had to learn quite quickly on placement. When coming back to uni, this helped when managing progress through the various modules and coursework deadlines.