Prakash Senghani

How a placement can lead to a rewarding career after graduating

Prakash Senghani, is a Site Engineer with Balfour Beatty and a recent graduate from our MEng in Civil Engineering with Surveying.  He undertook a one-year placement with Balfour Beatty that ultimately led to him securing a graduate position with the company.

I managed to secure a placement with Balfour Beatty working on the M1 Junction 6a -10 widening project and was lucky enough to be given a lot of responsibility early on. On the back of the placement I secured sponsorship from Balfour Beatty for the remaining two years of my degree, a summer placement and a permanent job offer at the end of my studies. Many of my colleagues struggled to find employment when we finished our degree due to the economic downturn and this is where I feel my placement year paid dividends. Also in my final year I was nominated for The Worshipful Company of Engineer's London Engineer of the Year award. Using the experiences from my placements to form my submission for the award, I was short listed and subsequently won the prize.

Since graduating I have worked for Balfour Beatty as part of the tendering team for multi-million pound London Underground Station upgrades and currently I am working at Heathrow Airport where we are building a brand new satellite terminal. Recently I came runner up in the Chairman's Prize for Innovation for a method of measuring earthworks quantities using photogrammetric software I first heard about during my degree course.

My placement had a huge bearing on the way my career has panned out; through my degree it helped financially so I could fully devote my time to studying and  I am now working on a prestigious project. I would advise every undergraduate, not just in engineering, to go on placement. The skills, experience and contacts you gain are invaluable and unattainable in a lecture room.