Urban Strategies Intern Review

The variety of tasks is very high. I supported strategic planning projects with a lot of GIS work (compiling spatial database and mapping in GIS), analysed results from stakeholder engagement activities, supported design work with Illustrator and Indesign, and attended joint-consultant meetings.

Besides some smaller tasks like mapping support and land ownership analysis, I was given the opportunity to follow a major project from start to end. The project was climate vulnerability study in a Caribbean country and I was given the responsibility to solve the problem of lacking fine-grained spatial data, and was involved from developing and refining the methodology of assessing climate risk and vulnerability, to the mapping of the initial outcome. Overall, I think the amount of responsibility given was considerable and it really challenged me to reach a new height.

I have developed my problem-solving skills as I was given some autonomy to approach the problem, especially about developing solutions in face of the lack of available spatial data in the urban planning contexts of developing countries. This sharpened my skills in research and spatial data processing. My technical skills, including GIS and Excel, have also seen significant improvement.

Support comes less from a centrally coordinated way and more from an informal setting (There are adequate central support on how to navigate the IT systems and softwares though). Team members are friendly and willing to have a chat with me about the background of the projects and the outlook of the industry. In terms of specific technical skills the direct support might be less, but the conversations that team members and directors took time to have with me were very insightful. Also, there were much back-and-forth communication on how to further refine the work between me and the seniors assigning tasks to me, which really made me learn through the process of 'doing'.

It is very sociable and welcoming. People are efficient at work but they also take time to chat with others. The overall atmosphere is really friendly, efficient with a relaxed setting. The team is very diverse, with people who studied different majors and there is a good mix of different ethnicities.

I enjoyed to a really large extent because it really challenged to me to go an extra mile. In other internships I had previously I might have been treated just as an intern, only being given some supportive tasks, but in the Urban Strategies Team at Buro Happold I was given more autonomy for problem-solving, and was given enough guidance and advice on how to refine the work after giving them to the seniors. Compared to other internship I had, this one gave me more decision-making opportunities regarding the methodology behind some strategic planning projects, which prepared me well with more complicated tasks to manage independently in the future.

Yes