I recently finished a three-month placement at Ramboll, a civil engineering consultancy, in Southampton. I was given the opportunity to work with the Environment team there as part of an industry placement funded by the National Productivity Investment Fund (NPIF).
During my placement I helped out with many different projects and got a great overview of what Ramboll’s environmental consultancy does. Ramboll is involved in a wide variety of projects and I was able to learn more and help with things ranging across various environmental impact assessments, site visits to new and ongoing schemes, and creating promotional material for recent exciting projects. I also assisted the team by researching a wide variety of topics and providing summary information on topics ranging from the adapting built infrastructure to climate change to the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive.
One of the main outputs from my placement was taking the UK Climate Projections released in 2018 by the Met Office (UKCP18) and building an interactive app using R Shiny for users to easily get outputs that they could use in environmental impact assessments. This was a great opportunity for me to expand my skills while providing staff within the climate resilience network at Ramboll with a new tool. I was able to feedback information to Ramboll on the outputs from the climate projections, how to interpret their associated uncertainties, and how best to use them in their work.
Overall this placement was a great opportunity for me to get involved in a sector that I had no experience in and see how companies work outside of academia. Everyone at Ramboll was incredibly welcoming and friendly and I very much enjoyed the opportunity to contribute as part of the team. I am very grateful to STARS and the NPIF for giving me this opportunity which will greatly help me make the decisions and next steps post-PhD; and also allowed me to live and work in the New Forest so I could explore a beautiful area and gain invaluable experience in dealing with animals on the road!
Traffic jam in the New Forest
Definitely not moving for some pesky car
