WSP

Daniel Philip Quinn, Worcester College, BA (HONS) Geography, First Year

Undergraduate, In-person working

Work Projects

I worked on a variety of projects during my time with WSP, but all where focused around the

topic of Sustainability and Whole Life Carbon, the main project I worked on was the

development of an array of tools used to increase the consistency, reliability, and accuracy of

Whole Life Carbon assessments. This was a pretty major project that took up the majority of my

internship, but I developed a lot of new skills that are really useful, from Excel to coding I found

these tasks really challenging but my line manager was really proactive and helpful in teaching

me some of the work, and giving me the skills to teach myself the rest of them.

Other than my main task, I worked on a few internal documents, whether that be guides to

certain trends or processes such as Carbon Sequestration or the Circular economy I felt like the

work really interested me and was a great excuse to develop my own knowledge in a sector

that I am really passionate about. It’s really

satisfying to see all my files on my computer and

seeing just how much I have accomplished during

my 8 weeks at the company. It’s really helped me

figure out what sort of career I want once I graduate

so I feel quite grateful for that.

Daily Life

My daily life was really flexible with WSP, the team I worked in was allowed to work in

whatever way benefited them personally which was really appreciated. I was told on my first

day I could work whatever hours I wanted as long as I attended all my meetings and did enough

hours, and I could work flexibly either in the office or at home, furthermore we could finish

early some days if we had something we needed to do or wanted to do, again as long as we

made up the hours. I found the company trusting me to do my job really nice and that feeling of

trust definitely motivated me and made me appreciate the opportunity even more.

My management team was all really approachable and it

made going to work a joy. I personally like to start work

early as I am definitely more productive in the mornings,

so I usually got to work around 8 in the morning (even

though at that time the office is quite quiet). I used my

salary to pay my rent and living costs and as I was only in

London for a short while I decided to live quite centrally

so my commute was only about 15 minutes on the DLR. Once I got to work, I'd sit at my desk,

plug my laptop into the monitors and start working. I found that I settled into this routine quite

quickly and finishing work at 4:30 was amazing. It was nice to be able to completely switch off

which I feel isn't always possible at Oxford so having that work life balance was amazing and

will definitely be something I consider for future job roles.

In terms of what did outside of work was mainly a mixture of exercise and socialising (with a lot

of Netflix mixed in), when I first arrived in the city I went to a lot of MeetUps to get to know

more people and found that really inviting, at one event I met two girls who I really hit it off

with and we went rock climbing semi-regularly, it was really nice to see myself building a life for

myself in a new city and that did give me a lot more confidence. I also used a lot of my free time

to go to the gym, get better at running or just go to cultural events in the Capital. I was living in

London and really wanted to make the most of it.

Lasting Impressions

I really enjoyed my internship, although I found the walk to my office quite anxiety inducing on

my first day I really quickly was made to feel at ease and I realised most of the fear I felt was in

my head, everyone at WSP was lovely and getting to know the other interns was lovely.

Although being the only non-engineering student there was at times quite odd, I felt this only