College News

Students and Sub-sea Engineering

A group of first and second year Future Engineers from QE gained an insight into sub-sea engineering by visiting the Modus owned C-STATE training centre at Darlington College.

As well as learning about how the deepwater robots work, known as ROVs (Remote Operated Vehicles,) they also gained some practical skills constructing specialist mini ROVs using kits developed by the US Office of Naval Research and then trialling how they worked in a test tank.  Jake Tompkins, MD of Modus spent time talking to the students about the range of opportunities within the industry, including specialisms such as maritime law and subsea geology.  SMD, a Newcastle company, involved in designing robotic arms for the ROVs gave the students a demonstration and spoke about design engineering and opportunities both as a higher apprentice and as a graduate.

Student, Joe Steward said:

“I was able to ask Jake Tompkins various questions about engineers in the workplace and how they can move into different roles within his company – he was extremely helpful and told me about the opportunities for working on projects overseas.”

Sophie Davies added:

“I really enjoyed the assembly of the mini robot. It was interesting to see a small scale version of the real thing and how they operate on the sea-bed – it wasn’t that easy manoeuvring it and it showed us how precise you have to be as an operator.”

Liz Bryan, Future Engineers Co-ordinator at QE commented:

“The students were all really positive about their visit. Not only did they find out about an engineering specialism, but they also learned about what companies are doing in the North East and the job opportunities that are likely to be available”