Chemoxy’s Year In Industry Student Attends Sabic Networking Day

Posted on June 28, 2017

Chemoxy has a very long history of investing in young talent in the North East of England through apprenticeships and in the Summer of 2016, for the first time, Chemoxy also welcomed an undergraduate placement student into its Operations team. Andrew Smith, who is in the middle of his Chemical Engineering degree at Newcastle University , joined #TeamChemoxy for a Year In Industry to develop his practical skills and to learn to apply the theory from his three year course. Andrew has been enthusiastic throughout his year with Chemoxy and commented “The placement year has given me the chance to take theory that I learned at university and apply it on a practical basis. This has been in areas that I’d already covered directly such as design of heat exchangers, piping systems etc… but also to new areas such as hot oil heating and nitrogen generation. Also, having the offices so close to the actual site has been really useful for me as my on-site experience before the placement was very limited.”

As his placement draws to an end Andrew was invited to the Annual Teesside Networking Event for all process engineering Year In Industry (YII) students hosted, this year, by Sabic.

The program for the day included contributions from all the YII students and a “safety themed challenge”. The students each shared a presentation on work they have completed during their respective placements. Andrew spoke articulately about the project that he took on as part of the Chemoxy Suggestions Team sharing the area selected for improvement which has health & safety benefits and will save precious time for process technicians.

Andrew talked through the designs he considered and the reasoning behind the final selection, going on to explain how he followed the idea through to installation. Andrew had to follow the Chemoxy Management of Change procedure, worked on Standard Operating Procedures and took on additional responsibilities within the pre-commissioning process. Andrew quickly learned that as a multi-functional custom processing operation, Chemoxy has to remain flexible and open to change adapting his solutions to meet this business need.

Andrew’s project was praised for the methodical approach deployed and the high degree of employee engagement.

At the end of the networking day Andrew and his peers from BOC, Sabic, DuPont, Lucite and Fujifilm formed two teams and were challenged to design safety infrastructure for the Sabic plant, presenting the final design to the Year In Industry Supervisors and Senior Process Engineers. The teams were quizzed on their work and won praise for the “comprehensive” design that considered both prevention and mitigation of hazards.

Andrew will return to University in the Autumn but concludes “I’ve been really lucky to have the year at Chemoxy as the compact and flexible nature of the company means that I’ve been able to work on a range of different projects alongside almost every department. The work has been challenging but also rewarding as it all goes to practical use.”

Chemoxy will welcome it’s new Year In Industry student, Rebecca Ball, at the end of Summer 2017.