Yet another adventure is over and this time we ended up in England, UK. As you most problably know by now are you as a Global Graduate working in 10 weeks periods at one position which then is rounded off with an activity week. So this week in England was the third activity week since our rotation at Engines Digital where we had a project in the US ended last Friday. Nevertheless, we managed to visit a range of cool companies during our tour in the UK.

• GKN Filton
• GKN Western Approach
• GKN Aerospace Top Management
• Airbus
• Reaction Engines
• Harewell Space Cluster med besök hos RAL Space och ESA

Our trip started off with a weekend in London where we squeezed in some sightseeing and a thrilling game of fotboll. Once the rental car was picked up, we typed in Bristol in the GPS and our eminent driver Emelie drove us safely there. The first company visit was hosted by GKN Aerostructures in Filton and David, a Swedish Global plc Graduate. He showed us around in the diffrerent factories and gave us an insight of how it is to work in the UK. We got the great oppurtunity to see the assembly of the last wing to A380 and impressing wingstructres to A350.

Tuesday made us be early birds since we had an appointment in Abingdon and Reaction Engines. We meet with their Graduates who teached us all about the company, the engine SABRE and the future of supersonic flights. They gave us a tour in the faciltites and we got to se the development lab as well as the first test site for the heatexchanger, the core technology of SABRE, super cool! Keep an eye open for Reaction Engnies and read more about there disruptive technologies: https://www.reactionengines.co.uk/.
The Tueday continued back in Bristol where we visited GKN Western Approach, a site where wing spars i composite are manufactured. It was very easy to follow the value stream since the factory was built-to-purpose which is not often the case in many other sites where a larger range of products are manufacutured under the same roof.

We spent Wednesday at Airbus where we learned more about the final assembly of wings for the mility freight aircraft A400M, simulation of fuel test and mechanical testing of wings. We also got to meet with some Graduates at Airbus, and as you might figured out by now we’re growing a network of Gradutes within all over the world which is absolutely fantastic!

Thursday offered a unique chance to meet with the Top Management of GKN Aerospace. During the day at the office in London we had intreseting and personal chats about e.g. future business models and strategies with our CEO Hans Büthker, CFO Will Hoy and Director of Global Marketing & Communications Dan Kendrick. Thank you for sharing your personal stories and tips!

We ended our week of visits with another early morning and a drive to Harewell Space Cluster, a campus which houses for 89 companies all active within space. During our visit we met with RAL Space and ESA which gave us an insight to the UK space industrie. A very intresting day which was rounded off with a history lecture at Stonehenge. The question why it was built still remains without an answer…

Thank you England and my amazing Graduate colleagues for another great week abroad! I must pinch myself sometimes to realize that I actually have the best job in the world. Now we’re all looking forward to spend the spring months on Swedish soil and our new rotations which starts the 1st of April (not an April Fool!). But first, shall we network with the space industy since Space Forum is taking place in Trollhättan and we’ll also welcome a large group of young girls which shall be introdcuded to what an engineer can do at GKN Aerospace.

Talk to you soon!