Joe ...

This week, we are catching up with Joe, one of the students at St Ambrose, who stepped beyond the classroom to take part in a very real project to bring the Platform Project at Manchester Airport…

What are you studying in college?
DEC, business studies, and film studies

​Where do you see yourself in the future?
I hope to do an apprenticeship. I am trying to expand my work experience and industry knowledge and to move into a career in digital engineering. I was introduced to civil engineering when DEC started three years ago, but now I am more interested in digital. DEC is a brand new course. Last year, we created our very own website to log our work.

How is your work experience going at Laing O Rourke?
It is challenging but good. It encourages me to face problems in other things as well as engineering. It is a good opportunity and I would recommend work experience to other students.

What was your initial reaction to the Platform Project?
Initially, I was taken aback by the potential of it. I have never been involved in a professional project outside of school. We were so up for it, and appreciated it from a professional point of view. We all worked well as a team. ​

What was your own specific role in the team?
We all worked well together as a team. We isolated the targets we needed to meet, and what our aims were. We all had input into overcoming these problems. I helped with Revit software, and working out how we would implement it into the project itself. Revit is the latest in building information modelling software. It creates virtual models of a building. This helps companies visualise building before creating. It can easily isolate problems at an early stage.

What was the biggest challenge?
Meeting deadlines and balancing college work. I had a very large workload at the start of the year, I coped pretty well. I met all the deadlines, but it was very very challenging. We came through well as a team.
We created good strategies to pull it together. We communicated well in and out of school and had organised structures to reach aims and deadlines which we did successfully. ​

What was the most enjoyable part?
Seeing it all come to life at the event itself. Also, just generally being given a great opportunity to work on something of such a high standard.

What personal growth came from this for you?
It gave me good insight into how a real company works. It showed me how important it is in industry to work as a team towards a common goal. It also gave me experience of putting theory into practice. ​

What do you like to do in your spare time?
I like to go to the gym to relieve stress. I also like to socialise, go to the cinema with my friends, etc...