Profile

I work for Coca Cola Enterprises who bottle and distribute coca cola brands throughout northern Europe in countries like France, Great Britain and Norway to name a few. We make over 12 billion bottles and cans a year- that is enough for everyone in the world to have between 1 and 2 bottles/ cans of our product. I am currently coming to the end of my first job rotation- working as an asset care systems supervisor (maintenance man!) in the engineering department of the biggest soft drinks factory in Europe. This has been a great experience for me- getting to know about how all the machines work along a soft drinks production line and designing systems to perform maintenance on them. This makes sure we can keep the machines in tip top condition and producing as much product as we can for our customers. Unfortunately I don’t get to know the secret recipe of coke though!

From September I will be starting my second job role as team leader of a production line shift. This will be a big challenge- managing people instead of machines!

I will usually get into work for around 8am- answer emails, and review the ‘to do’ list I have left myself the previous day. I will then set about trying to clear the list whilst more stuff inevitably gets added on! I spend a lot of time working with our operator team out on the production lines to come up with good maintenance systems. I also spend time with suppliers who I buy spare parts for the machines from. I am always looking for ways to custcosts and make our processes more efficient. I am also involved in other elements of the factory which I really enjoy such as organising charity events and being on our Diversity and Inclusion council. These are all important elements of the work place to make it a great place to work for everyone. I (usually!) leave work at around 4pm and then start the whole thing again the next day!

The best way to get people interested in engineering is for them to see what us engineers actually do! At Coca Cola Enterprises we have a dedicated department who run education centres across many of our factories. You can find out more about these education centres at:http://www.therealexperience.co.uk/. Each factory has an education centre manager who takes school visits on tours of the factory and tells them all about the company and what we do. I have seen how well this works for students and how they come away from the visit thinking it was really fun and interesting and understanding a lot more about what we do at the factory. I would use the money to start to expand this idea to other companies and fundschool trips to their facilities.