The course gave me the raw material. Placement showed me what to build with it.

Why I did an industrial placement

I knew that I wanted to get experience before I left university. I recommend anyone who is determined enough to find a placement to try their very best to do so. I learnt and experienced so much during my placement that I doubt another 3 years in university would ever teach me.

Real world problems require real world solutions, and you can only get this with real world experiences.

My experience at Airedale by Modine

I was the first AI engineer in my company and I was tasked with creating an AI-powered predictive maintenance system that predicted refrigerant leaks in industrial chillers. I developed this product from its ideation stage, all the way to its deployment. As of right now, the project is in its external testing phase, deployed in a client's data centre. 

I had complete control over my project - I was handed a problem and was trusted to solve it. The freedom to experiment, iterate and make real engineering decisions exponentially accelerated my growth.

The journey was not easy and even though the project itself was something completely out of my depth, I enjoyed the challenge and the obsession to solve it.

The moment I was most proud of though was presenting during our Yearly All-Hands Meeting - I gave a crash course on AI, teaching over 70 engineers and photoshopped my Managing Director's face onto a baby to illustrate the different types of Machine Learning. Not only did everyone love it (including the MD) but I received amazing feedback about "TedxTalk".

Everything I did was founded on an obsession to solve this problem I was given, but I made sure to have fun with it as well.

My mindset in life is "Obsession is second to none, but have fun with it” and that’s how I approached my placement and it hasn’t failed me yet.

Skills I picked up from my time in industry

Beyond my practical knowledge and experience in building complete products, I picked up a lot of soft skills: including managing stakeholder expectations, conveying technical information in an easy-to-digest format so that communication is efficient.

Furthermore, I recognised that every person in a professional environment operates differently and adapting to this required a certain degree of finesse. Understanding this is not only a must-have skill but I believe it will take you further than any technical skill could ever. 

Future plans

My placement exposed me to understand how a multi-billion dollar company operates and the effect of second-order business.

They operate in the cooling market, however given the meteoric rise in AI, the need for data centres have increased and with that the demand for cooling. This kind of second-order business effect was not something I had even thought off prior to starting placement.

Furthermore, I have studied how my placement company is structured and how they function. Using this experience and new found knowledge, I look forward to starting my own multi-billion dollar company in the near future.

My advice to people considering a placement year

Do it. There is literally nothing you can do in university that will ever amount to the experience you will gain while on placement. Furthermore, if you make an impact and prove that you are an asset, having a return offer in your back pocket while you finish your last year of university is an understated blessing. 

A little shoutout

The Engineering Placement Team was my saving grace when I had my first placement offer rescinded for "business issues". They got in touch and reached out to every single contact they had to find a replacement placement for me, and in that search is where I was approached by Airedale.