What Can I Expect in an HVAC Industrial Placement?

[JaredJames]

Right, not sure where this should go exactly but feel free to re-locate if necessary.

I'm starting a placement as a student engineer in July with a company which specializes in HVAC for industry. I am currently doing a degree in Aerospace Engineering (BEng Hons).

Basically, all I want to know is if anyone has any idea what I can expect. Any ideas on the type of work I will be doing? Whether from experience with HVAC or just a student placement in general.

Here is the description of the job I was given:
WOZAIR
Wozair design and manufacture Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Equipment for the Oil & Gas, Petrochemical, Marine, Nuclear and Process Industries.
The UK headquarters for Wozair are based in Gillingham in Kent
There is a placement opportunity with Wozair for an undergraduate student to work within the projects engineering department assisting engineers with day to day tasks including:
Production of engineering schedules and documentation
Structural and pressure drop calculations
Functional and acceptance testing of manufactured equipment
Modifying and updating and developing excel based manufacturing/engineering software.
For further details of Wozair please look at their website: www.wozair.com

I was just wondering if anyone could elaborate and give me a better idea of exactly what I can expect. Anyone done a similar HVAC placement or any relevant placement they can give me advice from?

I'm not worried about the work (once I know what it is, it's bound to be relevant to my course), but I really don't want to be blind-sided on my first day/week on something simple because I'm not fully sure of what I'm supposed to be doing.

 

[russ_watters]

I'm an HVAC engineer. I design the systems, as opposed to the equipment.

As an intern, I'm not sure what they'll actually have you do, but the task list you have there is relatively straightforward and much of it they should be able to teach you. Don't worry about being a complete newbie. You can't avoid that and you'll need to be able to deal with that gracefully.

The purpose of the job is likely basically sales engineering. Systems design engineers (me) call you and to help select a piece of equipment for their projects. They give you requirements (airflow, pressure, cooling and heating capacity) and you figure out the exact sizing (which fan, what speed it needs to run at, how much energy it uses, etc.) and put together design drawings and performance tables.

 

[JaredJames]

Many thanks for that response. Just one thing though, I was skimming through their website and noticed they have project engineers, sales engineers and a development engineer. I was told in the interview I would be working under the senior project engineers. I don't know what that means aside from the task list given. Is project engineer a common title or just something for this company?

 

[russ_watters]

Well, looking on the website, it appears they do the entire range of services from the design and manufacture of the equipment to the design and even installation of the systems themselves. Yes, "project engineer" is a generic title (it is mine), and in this case, could mean anything along the entire range of their engineering services. You may be doing a similar job to mine, you may be designing custom equipment. Dunno, exactly.

 

[JaredJames]

Hi, sorry to bring this up again, but what sort of thing can I expect on the first day? I'm just a bit nervous and wondering if anyone has had any experience with student placements and what the first few days are like.

 

[russ_watters]

Hi, sorry to bring this up again, but what sort of thing can I expect on the first day?

You'll probably make a lot of coffee and copies, and spend a lot of time staring at an empty computer screen when you aren't following someone around like a lost puppy.

 

[JaredJames]

Good good, what I wanted!