My Summer Placement Experience - By Kian Patel

“In the summer of 2025, I had the opportunity to complete a 10-week internship with Trigon.

During my third year studying maths at the University of Oxford, I had become interested in the practical applications of maths. To satisfy this interest, I chose modules in fluid dynamics, statistics and science. I also began looking for internships which involved maths but had a larger practical impact, which led to me seeing the fire engineering placement opportunity on the Trigon website.

Working in the Birmingham office was a great experience for me. At the time, the office was relatively new, with a director, two graduate fire engineers and me working there. I was initially very nervous, but instantly they made me feel at ease and as part of the team. The experience of working in a smaller office was perfect for me, giving me the opportunity to easily ask for support when needed.

At the start of the placement, I had a meeting with my mentor and manager to discuss objectives for the placement, and we created a plan on how I would achieve them. Some of these objectives included completing a project deriving equations for heat transfer, contributing to live residential and commercial projects, and completing over 40 hours of continuing professional development (CPD).

During my first few days at Trigon, I was shocked to already be working on a live project, which was for a new building on a school site. The project involved writing a fire safety strategy report (using a general template) based on the recommendations of BB100, with the aim of ensuring that the functional requirements (B1-5) of the Building Regulations were met. Despite my surprise at the trust given to me, I never felt overwhelmed with this task since my mentor was always there to guide me.

Reports like this one involved: conducting calculations to determine maximum occupancy and prevent external fire spread, marking-up architectural drawings to provide clarity, and ensuring the proposed building met the recommendations of guidance documents. 

This report was then read and reviewed by two chartered engineers. After each of their reviews, they made changes and discussed improvements I should make, which was an incredibly useful learning experience for me. Working on projects like these not only taught me more about the world of fire engineering, but also improved my writing, analytical skills and proficiency with Word (which I didn’t realise was lacking).

In my time at Trigon I suppported the team with preparaton of a number of fee proposal, contributed to fire safety strategy reports and technical advice notes for live projects.

My time at Trigon ended with me doing a presentation, in front of everyone, about my summer placement experience. This is something that I would never have thought I’d be able to do, but working at Trigon had made me a more confident person and repeatedly pushed me outside of my comfort zone.

I am so grateful to everyone at Trigon who made my experience so special. I learnt something from every single person there.

I’ll now be going back to university to complete my final year, taking with me all the skills and knowledge I’ve developed this summer.”