{"id":1694,"date":"2026-09-22T11:07:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T10:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/?p=1694"},"modified":"2026-09-22T11:07:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T10:07:27","slug":"sometimes-a-change-of-plan-leads-to-the-best-opportunities-my-placement-year-with-kilnbridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/2026\/09\/22\/sometimes-a-change-of-plan-leads-to-the-best-opportunities-my-placement-year-with-kilnbridge\/","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes a change of plan leads to the best opportunities: my placement year with Kilnbridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author: Genevieve Morris<\/span>, MEng(Hons) Civil Engineering in the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering<\/strong><\/p>\n

In May, right in the middle of exam season, my original placement unexpectedly fell through.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, while everyone else seemed to have their plans sorted, I had no idea what I was going to do. With support from the employability team, I regrouped, explored my options and started applying again.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when Kilnbridge gave me an opportunity I hadn\u2019t expected, creating an Undergraduate Engineer role for me at Old Oak Common, the new HS2 station, that will connect HS2, the Elizabeth Line and the Great Western Main Line.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re worried that a placement falling through means you\u2019ve missed your chance, you haven\u2019t. There are always other opportunities, even if they take you somewhere you didn\u2019t originally expect. Here\u2019s how my placement year unfolded, and what I learned along the way.<\/p>\n

Learning by moving around<\/h3>\n

I joined the drainage and utilities team. Over ten months, I worked across six different areas, each teaching me something different, from setting out next to a live railway line to leading a dilapidation survey across 7,000 square metres.<\/p>\n

Moving around meant constantly learning something new, but it also gave me a much broader understanding of how a project of this scale comes together. I don\u2019t think I\u2019d have gained the same perspective if I\u2019d stayed in one place for the full ten months.<\/p>\n

\"Site
Site progress throughout my placement at Old Oak Common.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Alongside all of that<\/h3>\n

Plenty of my time wasn\u2019t tied to a single area. I learnt how to write Task Briefing Sheets, breaking complex procedures down into clear steps, while also gaining practical experience in deep drainage, reinforced concrete pours, setting out, permanent works and temporary works.<\/p>\n

I also took on a system that had been quietly broken: the site diary. Three different teams needed it for different reasons, but none were completely happy with how it worked. I rebuilt it so it worked for everyone, and it\u2019s still the version being used today.<\/p>\n

On top of that, I helped welcome new engineers to the team, getting them set up with the right drawings and showing them around site so they weren\u2019t starting from nothing.<\/p>\n

\"Receiving
Receiving my first award with Kilnbridge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Finding my favourite project in the last place I expected<\/h3>\n

If you\u2019d asked me back in January, I wouldn\u2019t have picked CA05, the site\u2019s haul road. I was settled somewhere I liked, and being moved there felt like a step away from what I wanted to be doing. It turned out to be the best thing that happened to my placement.<\/p>\n

CA05 was relentless. The road was only 150 metres long, but there were fifteen concrete bay pours to plan, set out and get right, alongside everything else going on. I had to work through setting out problems, help develop a method for meeting cover requirements with what was already available on site, and hold my ground when I disagreed with a decision on a concrete delivery I didn\u2019t trust.<\/p>\n

It pushed me further than any other part of the placement, and it\u2019s the area I\u2019m proudest of. CA05 ended up the best performing section on site against programme, and I don\u2019t think that happens without being uncomfortable first.<\/p>\n

\"Drone
Drone shot from site.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What it's actually taught me<\/h3>\n

The technical side of this year has been huge. I now properly understand how site engineering fits together, from processing over a thousand ferroscans against a six week deadline to catching a geogrid installation error before it became a structural problem.<\/p>\n

But the bigger shift has been in the skills nobody puts on a spec sheet: standing my ground with a construction manager with decades more experience than me, delivering a safety presentation to 100 people with barely an hour\u2019s notice, learning how to build trust, and knowing that admitting a mistake early is worth far more than hiding one.<\/p>\n

University teaches you how to calculate things. Placement teaches you how to be an engineer people trust.<\/p>\n

\"Delivering
Delivering a Health and safety presentation at the company\u2019s annual safety standown.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you're thinking about it<\/h3>\n

Do it, even if your plan falls apart first. A placement year is a steep learning curve, and a lot of what you carry forward afterwards isn\u2019t necessarily what you expected going in.<\/p>\n

You learn how a live site actually runs: how contractors coordinate, how quickly decisions need to be made, and how problems get solved on the ground rather than on paper.<\/p>\n

If your first choice falls through, that\u2019s not the end of the story. Mine started with a rejection email in May, and it turned into the thing I\u2019m most proud of from my degree so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author: Genevieve Morris, MEng(Hons) Civil Engineering in the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering In May, right in the middle of exam season, my original placement unexpectedly fell through. Suddenly, while everyone else seemed to have their plans sorted, I...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2082,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,6,35],"tags":[88,183,24],"class_list":["post-1694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-department-of-architecture-civil-engineering","category-engineering-placements","category-undergraduate","tag-civil-engineering","tag-placements","tag-undergraduate-study"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2082"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}