During the assessment process, I felt that Anglian Water would really focus on meeting my needs and personal objectives. Because of its structured training programme, its size, and the nature of its work, the company seemed to offer enormous opportunities for learning through experience.
Since I have a background in Civil Engineering, my first placement was in Infrastructure Management, where I designed a spreadsheet to monitor contractors’ performance. I was also involved with other project work during this placement, such as reviewing our emergency planning procedures to come up with possible new solutions. This project in particular was really enjoyable as there was a lot of scope for creativity and may have resulted in reducing costs by several thousand pounds.
I have also worked within the Integrated Procurement Team, which does all of the buying for Anglian and our six engineering partners who are collectively designing and constructing assets over the next five years. We manage a budget of about £75 million, which is more than a student loan! I had the opportunity to see the team’s strategy develop and to help design its operating processes. At the moment I am involved in market research and liaising with sales teams from all our major suppliers with a view to potential savings.
From my own experience, I’ve found that Anglian Water is good at helping graduates indentify their development needs. For example, the company is currently supporting studies leading to my being chartered by the Institute of Civil Engineers.