From the beginning, Design Fire Consultants (DFC) was the company I had my eye on as they are a company that are not just limited to one area of work but many, including Structural Fire Engineering and modelling. I am particularly keen to carry on with both Structural and Fire Engineering studies after my degree and as such this summer placement was a great opportunity.

In my first week, I was introduced to the concept of tensile membrane action by one of the Structural Fire engineers. Consequently, over the weeks that followed, I helped to develop a guidance for the use and limitations of a Thermo-Mechanical and Structural Performance software with inputs from other engineers, to provide supervision and help where guidance was needed.

DFC was aware of my interest in Python and provided me with the chance to create a GUI (Graphical User Interface) for the optimisation of report writing which I thoroughly enjoyed. This has provided me with a good opportunity to venture into a side of coding that I haven’t worked on before.

At DFC, I was able to choose which areas of work that I wanted to be involved with. As I had no previous experience with CFD (Computational fluid dynamics) modelling this was something I was keen to do, and I was taught how to do this, before being given the opportunity to have a go myself! Having previously spent lots of time looking at the performance of timber structures in fire I was also given the opportunity to prepare a set of questions that need to be considered when designing such a structure.

Exposure to Chartered Engineers has been great as gaining chartership is one of my clear goals that I would like to achieve after graduating and gaining some industry experience, and this is one of the reasons why I am trying to pursue a Structural and Fire Engineering MEng (Hons) course.

I have had an incredible time working at DFC over my summer placement, the people at DFC are incredibly knowledgeable, kind, fun and engaging! Having the ability to talk and discuss with ex-firefighters to understand their opinion and perspective is certainly invaluable.

DFC has left me wanting to know more and expand my horizons far beyond what I’ve already learnt. I have become a better problem solver and collaborator through strong and clear feedback during my time at DFC which I am grateful for. DFC is a company where anyone will feel welcome and will be able to choose to do work within areas of interest to them.