Hi Everyone!

You would think that by now I would find writing my blog an easy task, this is not the case. It is however only difficult as there is so much to write and I feel that I will end up typing for hours!

So… week 5, its come by fast hasn’t it! I can’t believe that we are so close to finishing our experiences out here in Houston. It fills me with dread- as if these past weeks have passed so quickly then what will my final year at university be like? The thought that I have no idea where in the world I will be in a years time fills me with fear, but, I think that the Saltire experience has taught me not to be concerned about taking new opportunities.

The past week and a half I have been working within Wood Group GTS in their marking team. The industry of GTS- gas turbine services- is entirely new to me and for this reason I have found the projects I have been given challenging. Gordon Gorrie , Marketing Executive for GTS and my boss for the week has given me numerous hours of his time helping me to understand the industry and the work that he and his team do. Having a team located both here in Houston and in Aberdeen makes the communication a bit difficult. When we start work its already 2pm UK time and only having  4 hours of being able to work together it is essential that there is excellent communication between the two offices. I was surprised to find that Skype was the method of doing this effectively. It seems to work very well.

My main project for the past two weeks has been working on compiling a data sheet for customers explaining the work that Wood Group GTS do on control systems. Before this week I couldn’t even have told you what a control system was. Now I can vaguely explain… I think. The technical wording and learning from scratch I have been doing has definitely thrown me a learning curve. Most of the marketing I have encountered on my university course had been in B2C whereas with my time spent in GTS it is B2B which is really different, more so than I thought. I have spent hours thinking of sentences trying to fit what the organisation wanted to project to their potential customers and finally I have submitted a piece of work that I believe represents the core values of the organisation.

I have also been given the project of analysing competitors in order to determine their marketing message. In addition to this I have analysed their print materials, brochures, websites and videos in order to give my opinion on the overall quality on how and what information is presented. It’s an exercise aimed to evaluate Wood Group GTS in terms of content and quality and gather competitive information at the same time.

I have now passed over all my reports and work to the GTS marketing team and hope that the work I have done for them will be of some use in the future. Not knowing anything about Gas Turbine systems a fortnight ago I have gained a wealth of experience that I’m sure you just can’t get from a textbook.

The social side of the last couple of weeks here in Houston have been…interesting. We have found ourselves gaining life experiences as well as work related. The first lesson learned by our group- remember to check if the parking permit is on the car. Last Saturday we ended up sitting at the Auto Storage yard for two hours in the Texas midday sun, not a pleasant experience. Through no fault of our own we couldn’t get the car back till the Monday which to our annoyance meant we were restricted to one car between five. Our negotiation and communication skills we have learnt whilst here in Houston came into play when attempting to retrieve our car but in the end made no impact on the rather scary individual who sat behind the desk.

On the plus side the boys thought it was like the scene in “The Hangover” all we needed was a tiger and a baby named Carlos.

The past weekend was for some of us the highlight of our trip so far. Saturday morning 7am myself, Anton, Scott and John made the drive to Waller TX where we met our GlobalScot John Lee and Valerie Mathieu, head of Business Development. It was a beautiful morning and perfect weather for our adventure. After signing our lives away, literally, we headed into the main building to receive our initiation. We were at Skydive Houston, www.skydivehouston.com  and all of us were going to attempt our very first tandem skydive. We joked about it being a new teambuilding exercise- but I think it worked! I cannot explain how nervous we all were, not knowing what to expect and whether the parachute would even open!

 Nevertheless we made it onto the plane and slowly climbed the 14,000 feet into the air where we would be jumping from. That’s 2 miles in the air! Firstly John Lee jumped then Val now it was my turn. Walking towards the plane door and seeing the clouds below us was an unimaginable feeling my instructor Phil then flipped me round and proceeded to back flip me out the plane much to my horror. The feeling of falling through the air at 12p miles per hour was one of the best experiences of my life. At 5,000 feet I pulled the parachute cord and continued to float down to the ground where I was greeted by everyone else. We all agreed that it was amazing and we had to stop ourselves from jumping on a plane and doing it again!

I can honestly say that doing the jump here in Houston made it all the more special; we were on a high for the rest of the day! I am very proud of all of us for not chickening out! Well done guys!

So that’s pretty much everything up to date, I’m working in Business Development with Val now so I’ll let you know my experiences of that next week and if we attempt any more teambuilding!

Until next time.

Jen