Daniel Robinson, Summer Placement 2026 (Manchester)

“I have been on a summer placement as a fire safety engineer at Trigon Fire Safety’s Manchester office. Coming into the placement ahead of my final year studying Civil Engineering at the University of Liverpool, I wanted hands-on exposure to how fire safety engineering functions within a live consultancy environment, rather than only encountering it through my dissertation.

My time has been split across commercial, technical, and research-based work. On the commercial side, I produced fee proposals for a number of projects, which gave me an early understanding of how consultancy work is scoped, costed, and won before any design work begins. I also contributed to RIBA Stage 2 and 3 reports and project advice notes, giving me insight into how a fire strategy is developed and communicated at different stages of a project’s design.

The technical highlight of my placement was building a smoke control spreadsheet for steady-state smoke situations, covering both natural and mechanical ventilation, developed in accordance with CIBSE Guide E and BS 7974. This required me to translate guidance into a working calculation tool, which sharpened both my technical understanding of smoke control design and my ability to apply industry standards accurately and efficiently. I later presented this spreadsheet to the wider team, which pushed me to explain my technical reasoning clearly and answer questions on the underlying assumptions and standards.

Alongside this, I carried out a research project into e-bike stores within buildings, focusing specifically on the fire risks posed by lithium-ion batteries. This was a useful introduction to how the industry responds to emerging and evolving risks, and to researching a topic where guidance is still developing rather than fully established.

Trigon’s weekly CPD sessions were a valuable part of my placement, exposing me to topics beyond my own project work and giving me a broader sense of the range of issues fire safety engineers deal with day to day.

Across all of this work, I have appreciated how approachable and generous the Trigon team have been with their time and knowledge, and how much trust they placed in me with real project work rather than purely observational tasks. I’m grateful for the opportunity and the experience has confirmed my interest in pursuing fire safety engineering further.”