A Level students complete their work experience hosted by Engineering alumnus

During February half term, Oscar and Lucian, two Lower Sixth students from Trinity School in South London spent a week working at FairHeat, a specialist energy consultancy. The work experience opportunity came through Engineering alumnus Charlie Davies who became a Graduate Engineer at FairHeat after completing the MEng at Oxford University.

Oscar said, “I know I want to study Engineering in the future, but I am not set on which field I want to work in, so I’ve been taking every opportunity for work experience I can get. As soon as I arrived, I realised how little I knew about district heating, how heat networks operate, as well as the complexity of calculations used to monitor and optimise heating systems within buildings and homes. It’s the most learning I’ve ever done in a week!"

Lucian added, “On the first day, we had an introduction to the company and what a heat network is. We also completed an introduction to Excel course, which helped us for the rest of the week. On the second day, we worked on a heat-loss project and had to find out how changing the insulation and temperature of piping would affect a piping system in a housing complex. We then looked at energy strategies, estimating system peak hours and load for two different developments. We used values and tables which they gave us to find out more about the settlement and what amount of power they needed to use."

“On the third day, we did a heat mapping project for the whole day. They assigned us a city (I got Newcastle upon Tyne), and we had to find anchor buildings. These are buildings that require a lot of power or heating so hospitals, schools etc but they must be council-owned for ease of use. We then used a table to find out the peak demand and other metrics. After that we had to find a power source for the heat network, this could be a data centre, manufacturing facilities, waste management facilities or anything which creates heat. Once that had been chosen, we had to calculate the piping system flowing the roads and the diameter and velocity in each pipe".

Oscar continues: “We finished the week with presentations on what we had learnt, our solutions to the individual projects, as well as presenting our group marketing campaign to promote the idea of joining a heat network; this consisted of a presentation designed to be delivered in-person to homeowners in a particular development, alongside a short form video – a masterpiece for which I take full creative responsibility. I rather enjoyed acting as a director due to my strong background in theatre, which just goes to show how such different things, engineering and drama, can sometimes fit together!"

“As well as learning a lot about the industry, we also developed transferrable skills including – teamwork, through the group project; how to use advanced Excel functions in the workplace; presentation skills, and how to tailor a presentation to a specified audience."

Lucian says: “Overall, the week gave me a real insight of what a job in engineering could be like. We got to see the main area for what they do and what their job kind of is.”

Oscar finishes: “The placement was so well organised and gave me a good taster of all the important processes that take place in the district heating industry. I was genuinely enjoying and was genuinely interested in all the work I did throughout the week. I will explore work in this area further as a potential career path. I definitely still want to pursue engineering, and I am leaning more and more towards mechanical engineering. I would like to pursue a degree apprenticeship, though appreciate the application process is highly competitive. I am sure this experience will bring me one step closer to where I want to be in a couple of years’ time.”

Quotes and images reproduced with kind permission of Trinity School, Oscar and Lucian - read the original article.

Could you help to inspire potential engineering students?

The Department of Engineering Science undertakes outreach and access activities each year to help encourage young people to study engineering. Our primary goal is to ignite passion and excitement in science and engineering from a young age, especially amongst those who are traditionally underrepresented in engineering fields later in life.

There are many ways Engineering Alumni can help inspire and support potential engineering students, and we are always looking for passionate, knowledgeable individuals who wish to help support our work. If you would like to get involved, please contact the outreach team at outreach@eng.ox.ac.uk.