An important aspect of the engineering degree at the University of Auckland is the 800 hours of practical work that you must complete while studying. This past summer I spent 400 hours working at Fluid Chemicals to gain my general work experience hours and to get experience working in a business with a chemical basis. This is useful as I study Chemical and Materials Engineering. Fluid Chemicals is a local company that manufactures and sells quality industrial cleaning solutions with the goal to clean, sanitise, enhance, protect and improve through the use of their products. 

My main contribution during my work experience was packing off the product, putting orders together for dispatch and generally helping the warehouse manager and her team in any way I could. As I started to learn more I also got to be involved in some basic manufacturing operations and am currently starting the process of getting my forklift licence.

Although the work I was doing was not strictly engineering I still learnt a lot of useful skills that will help in my future career as I got involved in a lot of different jobs. This includes attending health and safety/ production meetings, learning about chemical storage and gaining practical knowledge about working with chemicals safely. The work environment was perfect for learning all of these useful skills due to help of my warehouse manager who was eager to share her industry knowledge.

Since I believe this experience was so useful I am continuing to work at Fluid Chemicals part time throughout the year to get the most I can out of this experience.