Any Engineers here? (Not Plumbers/Mechanics/Fat people in overalls)

DreXeL said:
I'm no 'engineeer', but I work in engineering as a CNC operator/programmer for a structural steelwork company. Amongst other things we are currently doing the steelwork for the ORION project. We are basically fabricating the steel 'skeleton' for the massive concrete encased 'path' that the laser travels down.

To give you an idea, this 'sleleton' is devided into modules, and each module is about half the size of the average 3-bed house. We have fabricated around 30 of these modules so far. That's quite some laser :eek: :eek:

Greenpeace aren't too happy about the project:

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/tags/orion-laser

Some of the lorry drivers have came back reporting that the tree-huggers have been lying in the road tying to stop them getting into the site....
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Sounds like an awesome job !, ever thought about fabricating your own suspention arms etc etc :p
 
divine` said:
2nd year civil sat up doing soil mechanics work at the moment. my god it's boring. worst. module. ever.
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2nd year civ eng aswell. I find soils probally the most entertaining. The worst modules i do consist of looking through pages and pages and pages of tables in a british standards code. Civ eng has to be the msot boring degree ever. only 10 hours a week this semester thank god so it means i can go job hunting and get some part time work to top up my beer vouchers
 
shimy182 said:
Sounds like an awesome job !, ever thought about fabricating your own suspention arms etc etc :p
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Put it this way, when on late shift that sort of thing happens quite a lot ;) To be fair you can't really make small 'precision' items using the machinery and materials we work with, but for bigger heavier things it comes in dead handy :D

As for it being an awesome job, well if I'm honest it's pretty boring most of the time, it's usually just your standard structural steelwork for new buildings, but we do get the occasional interesting job like the ORION project. Other interesting projects in the past include doing all the steelwork for the supports of the Pepsi Max Big One rollercoaster in Blackpool, and back in around '96 we did a lot of the steelwork for Hong Kong International Airport, which I found bizzare, I mean surely it would have been cheaper to fabricate it in Hong Kong :confused:

It had to be loaded directly into containers ready to shipped over there, and there was a lot of non-standard steelwork involved including massive steel 'stilts' with it all being on a manmade island.

02_ChekLapKok_HongKong.jpg
 
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mrmoose said:
2nd year civ eng aswell. I find soils probally the most entertaining. The worst modules i do consist of looking through pages and pages and pages of tables in a british standards code. Civ eng has to be the msot boring degree ever. only 10 hours a week this semester thank god so it means i can go job hunting and get some part time work to top up my beer vouchers
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lies, hydraulics and structures&dynamics are far more interesting than soils!!

Design is far better too.
 
I did Aerospace Engineering at Bristol. I did actually enjoy some parts of the degree, in particular the dynamics and control aspects, and did a PhD involving non-linear analysis of the dynamics of helicopter flight. Didnt want to do this as a career though so got out and got a job flying the things I now know how to design and build.
 
I have a degree in mechanical engineering and work for a company that deals primarily with rotating machinery for natural gas plants.(centrifugal compressors and Gas turbines) Although the job itself is mainly done via computer simulations and then analysis of the data. A couple of times a year i do get to test the equipment which is always good.

The interesting thing about my job is the expense involved around setting up these plants. The last one i worked on was going to cost $1.5billion as the initial setup cost, but would export a lot of oil and gas when done.

Emissions seems to be getting a lot higher profile at the moment as you may expect and so part of my job is to make the rotating machinery run as efficiently as possible across the whole operating envelope. This is often tricky, but challenging things are always more interesting.
 
mrmoose said:
2nd year civ eng aswell. I find soils probally the most entertaining. The worst modules i do consist of looking through pages and pages and pages of tables in a british standards code. Civ eng has to be the msot boring degree ever. only 10 hours a week this semester thank god so it means i can go job hunting and get some part time work to top up my beer vouchers
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Wait until you get to third year. Design modules I personally found were the best geotech was dire as were my results in it :D Although by far the worst module I've taken through my 3 years is the one I'm supposed to be doing coursework for now. Systems management, its all about health and safety and risk assessments. Its dire.

Aero
 
I work for an Oil and Gas Engineering Contractor. I planned to go into instrumentation, but ended up in procurement. I love engineering, but I enjoy procurement, as you get to cut deals, meet suppliers, get contracts etc. Its a good role from a management perspective.
 
I'm a 3rd year Fire Engineer at Leeds uni, Got a great first and second year placement with a company who now sponsor me - so 1st and 2nd years START APPLYING FOR PLACEMENTS NOW! I found doing a placement really gave me direction with my degree, I knew where I was heading and the sort of thing to expect. Also doing the placement gives you a lot of experience that someone just coming out of uni will not have. This will also allow you to progress in the company quicker.
 
Bomag said:
You should have chosen Civil Engineering as we do real 'Boring'.

The general public will find almost nothing an engineer does interesting unless you go into something really specialised e.g. explosive demolition or F1 designer. Its not even paid well :(
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Thats a lie, well sort of, it all depends on what field you go in to, I work for an Oil company and get paid very well, it will go up a lot more in 2yr when I finish my "graduate" phase and then go to contract after that.

Just for an example the general contract rate for structural design engineers in my office is between £500-£700 per day.

So nothing to turn your nose up at :D

KaHn
 
skaylesh said:
One more thing - you probably will never be rich as an Engineer, but you won't be poor or struggle either.
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1) Get your chartership in your field of engineering done asap. This will open up the doors to high paid contracting, senior and management positions and increase your salary generally across the board.

2) Can't remember the exact figures but the percentage of board directors in companies that are engineers by degree and earn £££s quite significant.
 
Not one yet, but I'm going to Uni in October.

Bath (my first choice) have given me an offer of AAA(inc maths+physics) for the 4yr MEng Mechanical Engineering degree, and there is an option I am fairly sure I'll take of doing a year in industry, two years into the course, as I hope it may help me land a job after it all.

Can't wait to start, just need to get the grades now :p
 
KaHn said:
Thats a lie, well sort of, it all depends on what field you go in to, I work for an Oil company and get paid very well, it will go up a lot more in 2yr when I finish my "graduate" phase and then go to contract after that.

Just for an example the general contract rate for structural design engineers in my office is between £500-£700 per day.

So nothing to turn your nose up at :D

KaHn
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Will you get chartered after 2 years too? Usually in my industry, which is oil and gas, you dont go contract until you have 5 years experience and are chartered. Thats for mech, chem, electrical etc. Chemical engineers get paid the most.
 
panthro said:
Will you get chartered after 2 years too? Usually in my industry, which is oil and gas, you dont go contract until you have 5 years experience and are chartered. Thats for mech, chem, electrical etc. Chemical engineers get paid the most.
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looking to be chartered after 3 maybe 4 yrs, i didnt say I was going to go contract at 25, but I could go contract with out being chartered a fair few here aren't chartered, actually in the design team I only know 2 maybe 3.

KaHn
 
Currently in 3rd year Mech eng at Strathclyde uni.

This semester has been boring as hell, its made me realise what I don't want to do after I graduate. Second semester should be a lot more interesting though.

At the moment I can see myself going into either the design side or financial/business.
 
I did my first year of Mech Eng and swapped to Product Design because it was more up my street. Designed and built a pulsejet-turbine engine in my final year which I could have patented if it wasn't a final year project. Got sponsored by Marconi and worked at Dyson for a year. Then worked in special effects after I graduated. So had a great time all in :) Then moved into IT for the higher pay which was a good idea at the time but now I'm desperate to get back into engineering or design.

Jokester said:
A mate of mine at uni got a job at Benetton and jacked it in after about a year.
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Most people I know who went into F1 did the same. Sounds great on paper but you get treated like dirt and paid next to nothing :(

shaffaaf27 said:
so for people that have come out with elecXXXXX ENG, or MEng, whats has pay been like for the jobs you d now, and are they related to the course you did?
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It took a massive plummet when I graduated (2002) and I saw graduate engineering jobs slide down to 14K then 12K and I decided to bail. It's come back up now but to be frank, graduate engineering jobs still pay exactly the same as they did 10 years ago when I started out which is quite shocking.
 
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