A course mate found the advertisement on our university website and emailed it to me as he knew I might be interested. Having lived in Dorset my whole life, I was keen to come back and being unsure about what specific direction I wanted to take within civil engineering and having barley covered it in lectures I thought highways would be worth a try and it would be interesting to work on projects in areas I knew and have grown up in.
Prior to placement I spent three years studying at Plymouth University advancing from BSc to BEng in Civil and Coastal Engineering. While with DCC I have done several formal training sessions, gaining certificates in:
- Construction Design management regulations
- Manual for streets – Overview of the Design Document
- Practical Highway Design
- Cycle and Walking – Better by design
- Design and construction of highway drainage
As well as this the Highways team funded my CSCS card exam (which I passed).
I worked as a trainee in the Highways Development team as their first student placement team member. My main duty was assisting other team members in their project work by carrying out design checks for various sites all over Dorset which included looking at:
- general arrangements
- surface finish plans
- kerbing layouts
- long and cross sections
- drainage layouts
- swept path analysis
- tree schedules
- and much more…
I also assisted in onsite inspections pre, post and during construction which involved tasks such as assessing the landscape, ensuring constructions works are being carried out correctly – keeping to our specifications and plans and checking completed works had been done to the correct depths, kerb heights, manhole positions etc.
The best part of the job was the variation between site and office work, so you’re never stuck doing one or the other for too long. I greatly enjoyed most of the training opportunities provided and feel I have learnt a lot from working with different members of the team. I will be returning to university for a further two years at MEng level and am still undecided about the specific career path I want to take succeeding my studies, however following this year, I know that working on highways and/or for local government are something I would definitely consider.