R&D industrial placement student Review

Daily I plan experiments, by working with the team to outline testing objectives and prioritise tasks based on time and resource availability. A portion of my work is based in the laboratory, directly testing materials and manually collecting the data, however most is organising the delivery of samples for external testing. Commonly I engage in discussions about my analysed results, in order to plan further experiments, but also other business issues.

Predominantly, left alone to run the project how I saw fit with, I designed the vast majority of the testing procedures and chose the parameters for each, I was also left to decide the direction the project went in and what we should focus our efforts on. I was also trusted to organise contracts, meeting and follow up meeting with suppliers to present the data we had generated on their materials, will little objection.

Project management - Developed substantially
Time management - Developed substantially
Written and verbal communication - Developed substantially
Formal writing - Further developed
Presenting - Developed substantially
Negotiation - Further developed
Data analysis - Further developed
Technical skills - Further developed
Computer literacy - Further developed
Creativity - Further developed
Adaptability - Developed substantially

Regular check in with Line manager, also regular check in with direct manager.
Lots of assistance in the lab from, in general, from the whole lab team who were very happy to answer my questions at all points.
Guidance from team and steer from other internal parties when showing the data generated, usually receiving next steps and ideas for testing to continue.

- Very friendly
- Laid back
- Focused on doing good/right by people and planet
- Integrity
- Respect
- Responsibility
- Pioneering

- Lab work was enjoyable
- The research was fun initially, but I now realise R&D isn't for me
- Not a fan off how open the desk are, I felt as if people were watching me type
- Daily interactions were quite standard, polite and friendly
- I only had a single project to take up my time but it was quite large so it filled it out well and I always had something to do

Yes