TOM SIMPSON

I applied to a wide range of companies but what attracted me about BAE Systems was that they have the capability to take something from concept and design stage right through to an end product, so you get to see the whole product life cycle.

BAE Systems have a very structured career path for graduates and industrial placements and the way in which that was put across and the flexibility that it allows you, really appealed to me.

My first placement was actually working on concepts for future submarine design. This is a piece of work that's probably quite rare. It was a good opportunity to get in there and get into some of the good work that was going on at the time.  A lot of these things are very much right place, right time but that’s the good thing about the graduate programme and the industrial placement scheme, in that you have the flexibility to be able to talk to people and find out about if there’s an area in which you need to develop or if there's a good opportunity for you.  I'm focused on the competencies that I need to gain to become a chartered engineer, that’s my goal, and it’s what the graduate programme is geared towards.

In terms of achievement, at the moment I’m working with a team of guys who put together the engine room – so the main engines, the gearbox and the electrical generators for the submarine.  Just yesterday we started putting steam into the test rig for the first time, it was really exciting.  I was watching all the pipe-work heat up with thermal imaging cameras.  It was techie, geeky heaven, I loved it!