All vocational courses at East Coast College feature a mandatory industry placement. Based on how much time an employer is able to support a student in the workplace, these last between two and 52 days.
An Industry Placement Coordinator ensures a student is ‘work ready’ using a skills-based assessment, and then helps focus their contribution via workplace visits and the use of dedicated administrative software. In return for hosting a student, employers not only gain access to a pool of motivated potential future employees but also receive free mentoring training, as well as free access to some of the courses in the college’s staff training provision, in subjects ranging from first aid to team work.
Adam Brown: Work experience at our Energy Skills Centre with Morgan Sindall
Adam Brown is a student at our East Coast College Great Yarmouth campus, studying for a BTEC Level 3 in Energy Engineering. As part of a bid to inspire more people into construction, Morgan Sindall’s work experience programme has placed students on projects close to both their location and career pathway.
“Tom the site manager at Morgan Sindall got in contact with my tutor to enquire about work experience placements. He then spoke to a number of students and we put our names forward. After an interview, we got feedback about how we performed and I was lucky enough to secure a two week placement on site at the Energy Skills Centre project in Lowestoft.”
Adam was on site for two weeks, with the placement days tailored to fit around his ongoing college course.
“I’m studying two days a week at college so I’ve been very keen to get as much work experience as possible – I’ve already completed four work experience placements and so getting the opportunity with Morgan Sindall helped me to continue to progress my knowledge and experience across different industries.”
As part of the work placement, Adam shadowed Tom Grant, one of our graduate site managers and learnt about a whole host of tasks on the scheme.
“I was involved in six week look aheads for the project and was on site regularly undertaking ground tests, using the lasers with the engineers and analysing the drawings to understand the construction process.”
“The best bit for me was analysing the drawings and then seeing how it happened out on site. In the two weeks I was there, the building came on loads. I can absolutely apply this to my learning as a lot of the work I did with tolerance testing is directly transferrable to the energy sector.”
Despite Adam studying an energy engineering qualification, he remains quite open to his options ahead for his career pathway.
“I enjoy the energy sector and have a keen interest in offshore, but I’ve really enjoyed the construction management aspect. It’s really kept my options open for when I finish my course. This placement has given me the insight into what Morgan Sindall does, but also specifically about the role and how challenging it can be. That excites me so I think somewhere between the energy and construction sectors I’d like to progress my career up towards management levels.”
Please contact us if you have work placement opportunities available.