Hello all once again it is time to fill you all in on the weeks events. This week at work has really heated up. I spent the week brain storming with two of my fellow interns on how to design a new Wood Group website for the BP MS 150. For all of you that don’t know the BP MS 150 is a bike ride from Houston to Austin for people trying to raise money for suffers of multiple sclerosis. The ride is a 180 mile journey spread out over 2 days, last year it involved 3,000 volunteers, 13,000 cyclists and raised $17 million.

Most organizations in Houston have a team that takes part in the ride, with trophies being awarded for various team achievements. At current, Wood Group does not have a team website for new and existing team members. Over the past couple of years this has caused a number of difficulties, highlighting the need for a Team Wood Group website. The project that we have been given is creating a new Team Wood Group website that will appeal to and be accessed by new and existing team members. The week was broken up into a number of brain storming sessions with a large number of possible ideas on how too attract new team members, whilst also providing a website for existing members. Luckily for both Anton and I, Kirsty (Intern) is a marketing student and gave a number of great ideas on how we all could achieve this goal.

At the end of the week we presented our ideas to management and the team captains for the bike ride. They were all delighted with our ideas. We have now moved into the development stage with Kirsty tackling the site content, and I will take on all technical aspects involved in designing and developing the website. I was sad to say goodbye to my secretary (Anton) this week as he will be moving departments to business development.

At the weekend my fellow interns and I decided to take a grand leap of faith by going sky diving. Yes that’s right sky diving. It all began with a casual conversation in the office with Anton suggesting that sky diving would be a fun thing to do. As ever I though this would be a great test of nerve and we decided to get a small team together to do this. We ended up with six people, four of these being interns and the other two being John Lee President of Operations for North America, and Valerie Mathieu head of Business Development. I was fine all week until the day came, were I found I was hit with a rush of nerves and excitement. We arrived at the jump center expecting a couple of hours of training. Instead all we received in the form of training was and I quote, “when we leave the plane push your hips forward and your legs back”. As it was our first jump we all had the option of a tandem jump (were you are attached to someone) or an accelerated free fall were you undertake 6 hours of training to be able to jump without someone attached to you. We all decided on a tandem jump for financial reasons.

In the plane I found that all my nerves had been replaced with excitement. Oddly, Valerie who had been as cool as a cucumber all day, started to panic as she ventured towards the open door, she began to push back with her feet. Of course this was no use as the instructor took charge and launched him and Valerie out the plane. I cannot describe the feeling of hanging out of a plane 13,500 feet up, waiting to drop from 0-120mph in 60 seconds. The closest word would be amazing, the feeling is incredible, free-falling at 120mph is an experience that all should feel. I would like to say how proud I am of all who took part in the sky dive, as we all at some point or another had to combat our nerves. I would especially like to say how proud I am of Jen and Val as they both showed a tremendous amount of courage on the day.

This week we all plan on shooting and taking a trip back to Austin to experience it when all of the students are home, so I am sure there will be lots to report on next week.

Until then, goodbye