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Students from Year 1 of Civil and Structural Engineering visited three sites as part of their semester 1 classes. We are very grateful to the staff from the companies concerned for helping us run these.
On the first trip they got to see the New Forth Crossing with a detailed talk from FCBC who are building the cable stay bridge.
Balfour Beatty are very pleased to have supported these site visits and run guests lectures for the last three years. We really need more good engineering graduates. We are therefore delighted to support Heriot-Watt University in enhancing their courses. As a Heriot-Watt graduate myself, it is great to see a new generation of civil engineering students wanting to join our profession.”
The second trip was to the new Edinburgh Gateway interchange being constructed by Balfour Beatty on behalf of Network Rail. This is at Gogar roundabout where the trams will eventually link to the railway. Mark Elliot, the Site Agent for Balfour Beatty said, "Balfour Beatty are very pleased to have supported these site visits and run guests lectures for the last three years. We really need more good engineering graduates. We are therefore delighted to support Heriot-Watt University in enhancing their courses. As a Heriot-Watt graduate myself, it is great to see a new generation of civil engineering students wanting to join our profession.”
The final trip was to Quartermile on the site of the old Royal Infirmary led by the site managers from Quartermile. Here they got to see the complexity of the refurbishment of the old buildings and the details of the new builds including a visit to one of the new Penthouse suites.
Dr Pauline Thompson from the School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society described the benefits of these visits, "It is an invaluable experience for our students to see live sites and meet practicing engineers. We hope this will inspire them to see the wide range of career options that could spring from a good degree from Heriot-Watt."
Civil and Structural Engineering at Heriot-Watt
Our undergraduate courses here at Heriot-Watt are very well recognised by industry. A very high proportion of our graduates continue to graduate level jobs in the civil engineering field. One of the reasons for this is our excellent links with industry which start in year 1 with these site visits.