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Up-skilling the Engineers of Tomorrow Mustn’t be Undervalued

Up-skilling is vital for today’s engineers who need broad and agile skills so that they can thrive in a moving technical and digital world.
At Osborne, to help our early-career engineers obtain such skills, we give them the opportunity to work outside the business for approximately 9 months. This gives them a fresh and alternative perspective on civil engineering, and they return as better engineers.

Through a long established exchange programme with a select list of design consultancies, our engineers are swapped with one of theirs. Working with top designers, they gain experience not only of the design process but also of BIM, architecture, sustainability, geotechnics and many other design aspects. One of the biggest benefits is the interaction with a new community of engineers and the resulting networks established. In addition, the consultant’s engineers gains invaluable site experience though being placed on one of our projects.
This exchange programme plays a vital role in our successful engineering training scheme which has an 86% pass rate at Professional Review. This is popular with our engineers as seen when they spoke about their placements, below.

“There is no doubt in my mind that a placement within another organisation is not only useful, but vital, in ensuring that we get a balanced and well rounded experience during our initial training and development. As well as adding to the technical knowledge from our degrees, I believe it also helps us to contribute to and question future designs if involved in ECI or design and build work, consider more carefully any design changes to be made on site and also learn from the way another organisation operates. It is also important in order to fulfil the requirements of the ICE for Chartership, and a reminder of some of the core engineering knowledge and skills we are expected to have”. Chris Bates, Graduate Engineer, Osborne.
“I personally have really benefitted from doing my secondment with Osborne. I’ve learnt a huge amount in a relatively short space of time about construction and what it’s like working on site. I’ve had a chance to see a variety of activities, be involved with planning and coordinating projects and worked closely with the manager, supervisor and engineer to understand their roles. I’d highly recommend it to any engineer working towards Chartership as I believe it’s beneficial to see how what we work on in the office translates in the construction process”. Fran Wormald, Graduate Engineer, WSP|PB.

Osborne has announced it will be opening its doors at two of its construction sites in Brighton and London, at this year’s National Open Doors Event. The event takes place on Monday 27th March until Saturday 1st April 2017.
Open Doors events across the country will see construction companies opening some of their sites for the general public to take a “behind the scenes” look and to ask those who make it happen, all about what they do.

Malcolm Attrill is the Engineering Manager for Osborne in their Infrastructure Business.

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