Well, after eight stupendously incredibly amazing weeks, a day and a half awake and almost 4500 miles, I’m finally home in cloudy, drizzly Scotland. At the minute I feel like someone has played a horrible joke on us, and later on today they’ll stop tormenting us and it’ll be hot and sunny again. Fingers crossed. Since writing my last blog just over a week ago it has sank in just how much we’ve done and how much we’ve achieved during our time with Wood Group in Houston, TX. Since being picked up at the airport yesterday afternoon I’ve been filling in my family on what we’ve been up to. It’s seems like I’ve been talking endlessly, let me re-phrase that, I have been talking endlessly, and I’ve not even scratched the surface.

I guess I should probably fill you in about what I’ve been up to for the last week, and that means the last update from WG Light Industrial Turbines. That’s right; the engineering chat will finally be drawing to a close. I can imagine that Anton, and probably (read definitely) Jen, Kirsty, Dave and John for that matter, will be pretty chuffed that they don’t have to listen to me every day. I was even getting bored of my own voice so they’ll probably be getting the champagne cracked open by now. After the first couple of days of the last week, I had managed to get most of my projects wrapped up; therefore I had time to focus on my exit presentation and performance review. The presentation ended up being quite a daunting affair, as I spoke in front of the senior engineers and some of the management staff at LIT. However, I got really good feedback on the presentation and on the work which I completed during my time in Houston. Now that my performance review is submitted, I have a lot of decisions to make. I’ve been in contact with the staff that organise the engineering graduate rotation with Wood Group, and the chances of being pushed through to the final stages of selection seem rather promising. Last week, I was also given the chance to participate in a turbine test. This was a fantastic learning experience as it allowed me to apply the knowledge I had developed after completing some performance research over the past few weeks.

If you happen to have read Kirsty’s blog last week, you’ll have seen that all the interns got the chance to visit NASA. You’ll have also read that, being an engineer, I was “like a kid in a candy store”. This may have been bordering on the truth, although I tried to keep my excitement under wraps, apparently to not much success. The VIP tour we were given gave us the chance to visit some areas of Johnson Space Centre where the general public aren’t allowed. This included; the Neutral Buoyancy Lab which is an underwater facility where the astronauts get the chance to simulate ISS space walks before actually blasting off into orbit. Next we were taken to Building 9. This building housed the full size mock –ups of all the space craft used in current missions. These are used for all sorts during the design phase but are also used for training purposes. I thought it was great to be able to see the full size equivalents of the vehicles, as lord knows no one’s going to ever let me anywhere near the real things. Finally we were taken to the building which contains the mission control centre. Here we were shown current facility which is used to control the international space station and shuttle missions, but also got to see the historic mission control centre. This is where all the Apollo missions and in fact every NASA mission up until the late 90’s was controlled from. So, anyway, it was pretty cool and I could talk about it for quite a bit longer, but as I’ve already sealed my reputation as some sort of super geek, I’ll leave it there so that I don’t do my “street-cred” any further damage. I have to say thanks to Val for organising the trip, it was a great experience and something that I’ve wanted to do for a while.

Towards the end of the week we went out a couple more times, on Thursday with some of the employees from the Production facilities offices, and then on Friday night all the interns went out for a final meal together. We reminisced about our time Texas and I think that’s when it finally sank in that we were heading home. It didn’t do any wonders for the atmosphere at dinner but it was fun to reflect on how much we had done over such a short period of time.

Anyway, I think all that’s left to do is to say thank you to some of the people I have met and worked with over the summer. Firstly, thanks to Derek Blackwood and John Lee, the two Global Scots who get right behind Wood Group’s involvement with the Saltire Foundation. Thank you so much for this unbelievable opportunity. I’m sure the experiences I’ve had will affect my future in so many ways. Next, thanks to everyone else in the PF offices, especially Maribel for looking after all of us while we were in Houston. Finally, at LIT, Tarun, Philip, Jody and everyone else, the list is massive so I apologise for not giving everyone a mention. I cannot say thank you enough, you taught me so much over the summer and helped me to apply knowledge which I had already been taught. As I said in my first blog, although you get taught the stuff you need to know at university, it isn’t until you get the chance to work with professional engineers that you really start to understand what’s going on.

This has been one of the best experiences of my life, and that is no small part due to the hard work put in by everyone at Saltire Foundation. Thank you so much for giving me this incredible opportunity. Last but by no means least; my fellow interns Anton, Dave, Jen, Kirsty, and John. I had an awesome summer with you guys and it definitely wouldn’t have been the same without you.

Looking forward to seeing everyone soon and hearing stories from the rest of the interns

Scott T.