The University of Warwick is celebrating a new milestone for its engineering internship scheme, with over 200 internships now completed. The milestone is being celebrated at the university today at a special event to mark the UK’s National Manufacturing Day (28 September).

The internship scheme, which was established by the University’s Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) in 2013, places students in engineering internships at manufacturing businesses in the Midlands, and has been a hit with both students and businesses, with 75% of businesses experiencing increases in productivity and 95% saying they had noticed a positive cultural change thanks to the interns.

Most businesses who hired one intern through the scheme returned in the future, with around 70 interns now having been offered full-time positions as a result of their internships. The scheme was established to address the skills gap, with businesses needing more engineers than are available. Research suggests this gap is likely to get worse as demand increases, particularly for ‘green’ engineering roles.

Febry Wardhana, an engineering project management post-graduate, recently completed his internship at Dudley-based Midtherm Flue Systems Ltd (pictured) and has been retained by the company. Midtherm’s training and development manager Michael Whale said: “Febry’s work has opened up a lot of new doors for us and he has done a great job, so much so that we offered him a full-time position as a process engineer.”

Other interns have gone into a range of high-profile roles in both small and large organisations. Warwick graduate Sam Woodcock who undertook an internship at Pashley Cycles is now working at Arup as a mechanical engineer. He said: “My internship with WMG and Pashley helped me to become comfortable in not knowing the answer to every problem I faced, and therefore taught me how to persevere and overcome engineering challenges.”

Dr Mark Swift, director of SME engagement at WMG, said: “Our internship programme is hugely important for us. It has supported over 200 manufacturers while tackling a range of important projects in their businesses and proves that young engineers can add real value. It is critical that we kickstart the careers of our future engineers so that they can get on board to deal with the manufacturing challenges of both today and tomorrow.”