Hi everybody I’m David Walsh and I’m about to go into my fourth and final year of Civil Engineering at the University of Abertay, Dundee in September. Thanks to the Saltire Foundation I got a placement with Bilfinger Berger Civil in Wiesbaden, Germany…but only for one week. After one week I’ll be flying to a wee town in northern Sweden called Umea to work on the site of one of Bilfinger’s projects, specifically the rail bridge crossing the river Umealv. I’m not much of a writer so I just spilt my week into days and give a brief description of what I’ve been doing\will be doing. So to start off…

Sunday 12^th July - All the flights from Glasvegas to Frankfurt were on time but I had to pay 25 pounds to get my bags on the plane because they were overweight, hopefully I'm better at engineering than I am at packing. I met one of the other interns in Heathrow and then met the second in Frankfurt. We got picked up by Mr. Ken Reid (A member of the board of directors – aka the big boss) of Bilfinger at the airport and he drove us in an incredible S-Class merc to the hotel so we could drop off our bags before he brought us out to dinner. The food at the restaurant was amazing and we had a good laugh with Mr. Reid. So after dinner he brought us on a short guided tour of Wiesbaden and then back to the hotel. The three of us interns decided it was a shame to waste the nice evening in a hotel room and went out for a (yes just one) beer.

Monday 13^th July - I got driven to the office by Mr. Reid and his driver and was introduced to everyone in the office and subsequently forgot all their names 5 mins after meeting them. My first task was to review a tender submission for a small bridge in Dubai and brief my manager on the important details of it and such. The afternoon was taken up by learning about the tendering and procurement processes for international construction companies and what it takes for a tender to be successful. Oh and I forgot to mention I have my own office (well mine until I go to Sweden and the other guy comes back from holiday) so that was a really nice surprise.

Tuesday 14^th July - I was given a personal tutoring session all day where I learnt more in 6 hours than I ever have before in my life. I got taught the finer points of purchasing, transportation, logistics, estimation, bills of quantities and everything in between. It was a stark reminder of how much uni doesn't teach you about how real businesses work (so thank you Saltire for getting me here). I don’t blame the uni for this it’s just something that you can only really learn from experience. So from spending the day with two German guys who only speak some English I can now have a conversation with the locals about how to build bridges, not so helpful for ordering food and drinks though. The evening was spent going out to dinner with my manager Stephen Cardwell and one of the other interns. It was really good to have a chat and a laugh with him outside of the office.

Wednesday 15^th July - I was given a bit more tutoring and then set the slightly daunting task of calculating the amount of formwork and concrete needed to construct a 128m bridge from the draft drawings given to me. That took up most of the day as it was my first time doing that for anything bigger than a concrete box the size of a garage. The evening was spent going out to dinner with Laura the other intern at Bilfinger and some wandering about exploring the city. 

Thursday 16^th July – I was really looking forward to today as I was going to spend three hours in the morning being taken around the design offices and shown projects currently being designed. It sounds geeky I know but this is my favorite part of my degree, the calculation of forces affecting structures and the how your design must be modified to cope with them. It was all very similar to what I was learning in uni because of the common design standards throughout Europe. After lunch I got a tutorial in the programming of the schedule of works for bridges and other projects and that was really interesting as well. I managed to get my work finished early so a wee wander into town to buy some stuff and look at some of the really big cathedrals was in order.

Friday 17^th of July - I will be going to another German city called Mannheim with the project manager to see the incremental launching of a bridge there. That should be good to see as it’s not every day you get to see a structure weighing hundreds of tons move.

Saturday 18^th July - Reserved for touristy type stuff, I was thinking about taking a boat up the river to see some of the castles and vineyards along the river bank, according to Mr. Reid it’s a must see so let’s hope the weather stays good, fingers crossed as its been a bit temperamental the last few days.

Sunday 19^th July is going to be spent flying to Sweden. The town I’m going to is not the easiest in the world to get to so I must transfer planes 3 times :( Frankfurt->Copenhagen->Stockholm->Umea...finally. I don't really know the plan of action for when I get there but I'll be onsite for 6 weeks and then come back to Germany at the end of my placement for week or so. I’m not sure about internet access on the site so the blogs posts might be a little far apart.

I’ve been pretty shattered every day after work so far so I haven't even managed a night out on the town yet but that will be fixed shortly. Wiesbaden is brilliant and the people are so friendly and helpful and after a week here there isn’t a thing I can complain about, apart from the scaffolders working on the Bilfinger building who are making more noise than a freight train :). Oh and it’s taken me an hour to write this because the some of the keys on this German keyboard are in different places and I now spell worse than a three old so apologies if you find mistakes.

Having loads of fun and can’t wait to get on site in Sweden and well done to anyone who actually read this really really long post.

Dave