Benefits for students and industries

Working with Industrial placement students is highly rewarding for both our colleagues and the business. Their enthusiasm for the profession and the task provides a boost to our projects and their up-to-date engineering knowledge drives innovation.

We can provide a wide range of experience from a small scale maintenance task up to billion pound projects. We have a large community of professional engineers who can help slingshot a young engineers career on the road to professional registration. Sellafield takes on a large number of placement students and graduates every year and therefore, students get a chance to socialise and learn from peers going through the same experience.

Bringing in young engineers is an opportunity for us to think differently and push the boundaries on some of the most difficult engineering challenges in the UK. At the end of the scheme all students are reviewed and if successful they may be offered a role on the Sellafield Ltd Graduate Scheme when they have finished their studies.

We've had many positive experiences when working with the University of Nottingham. There are many benefits to using the student placement program, including the students ability to deliver valuable work that is critical to the success of our business, and also for us to take an extended look at potential post graduate applicants. We even award conditional offers to placement students who have performed particularly well.

Students perform valuable work on our projects, often supporting the Asia based teams in areas where engineers working in different time zones have difficulties. These can range from supporting inspections, analysing parts, and managing test programs.

Students get to experience first-hand what a business environment really is like, how it’s run, its challenges, how the different stakeholders interact, and what the day-to-day and the decision making process looks like. They get exposed to different areas (not only their core focus areas), expanding their network and learning about different parts of the business that they weren’t aware of it. They'll also gain experience in their social skills, having to do presentations, collaborating with different stakeholders from different business areas and with different approaches.

Taking on a student means that the business can benefit from fresh points of views and approaches, working with someone that hasn’t been “pidgeon-holed” in the position for years. They also bring different insights and resources that people in the company might not be aware of. We even on occasion have offered deferred graduate placements to successful interns. 

Working with the University of Nottingham students has been very enjoyable experience. They are diligent to different technical aspects and perform very well, applying academic knowledge to their day-day-day work in a professional setting. 

The main benefit for the students on their placement would be that they get a taste of being in a professional setting in an engineering company, as well as getting involved with different aspects of the role. It is also a chance to determine whether the general role and industry is suitable for their future career path and development. 

Atkins is keen to inspire students into the STEM, and in particular engineering careers. Offering industrial placement opportunities is a part of that. It will also help with graduate recruitment in later years as we offer permanent positions to some of our placement students as a part of the graduate scheme.