Alexandru Uifalean

The placement opportunities provided by the NETP programme is what makes the University of Northampton - Department of Engineering outstanding from a personal and professional development point of view.

As I am part of the Project Engineering team we always support each other sharing tasks so workload is distributed as equally as possible and according to each member’s capabilities. On numerous occasions two engineers work on the same project (i.e. I do the technical part and the other person does the commercial side of the project or vice versa) to improve efficiency and delivery time.

Communication represents a crucial aptitude for a Project Engineer. Every day I speak to different kinds of people at all kinds of levels like for instance from a technical (i.e. production personnel, sales people, customer), commercial (i.e. sales people) or administrative (i.e. manager) point of view. I must make sure that every stakeholder is constantly updated and kept in the loop of correspondence.

Being in a hands-on engineering environment I got the opportunity to use resources such as system sizing software which gave me a clear understanding of how to choose suitable size components for a specific application. Moreover, the in-house availability of major project prototypes helped me gain customer and product experience alongside useful technical insight for the times when I was asked to confidently do design changes to these projects.

After almost a year of working in this high paced company I found that the ability of critical thinking develops almost naturally as I am encountering engineering issues and dilemmas that needs solving on a daily basis. What is more, I discovered that in time I became more accurate in estimating how much time I need to spend on certain project related activities and endeavours. Consequently, daily work planning is more accurate and consistent.

All my appreciation goes towards the NETP programme and Festo Ltd.