Ben Lawrence MEng Acoustical Engineering
3rd year student
Hi, I'm Ben Lawrence and I studied MEng Acoustical Engineering within Engineering and the Environment at the University of Southampton.
Jumping at the opportunity to work in a foreign country was the best thing decision I've made since deciding to study at Southampton. The ability to put your knowledge into practice just gives this sense of achievement that make the hard work at a library desk worth it.
Acoustical Engineering was the perfect course for me. I realised that having a love for music (but not enough to do it to degree level) and a really strong interest in maths and physics, I could really get myself deeper into the principles behind noise and sound. I chose Southampton mostly because of the reputation of both the University and the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research as a fantastic place to study.
The course is going really well. I've learnt so much and had so many incredible opportunities and, despite not knowing it, being part of the ISVR means being taught and working with world leaders in their fields. There is a lot of tough work to do but that is something you learn. The workload is getting steadily heavier but so much more fascinating with it.
Everyone is encouraged to find placements for the summer. Emails are sent by the Employability Coordinator intermittently with potential opportunities. These usually include year out placements an often graduate jobs too. One of the emails was an offer to work with DeutscheBahn in Germany over the summer. I replied straight away, a telephone conference was set up and it was pretty simple from there. I've always wanted to improve my German after regretting not taking it further than GCSE so I saw this as the perfect way to do it.
I spent 3 months in Munich working for DeutscheBahn Systemtechnik. They're a subsidiary company of DeutscheBahn who run a huge number of the cross-country train services in Germany as well as a huge number of other things. DB Systemtechnik are particularly interested in railway research so along with a number of other departments, the Acoustics department were working on large-scale European projects. I was planning noise barriers and mostly concentrating on two projects which had been running for a number of years. Data analysis and report writing (in English thankfully) both came into it and I also got the chance to go and make measurements of a new high-speed train, both on-board and at the side of the track.
It was an incredible 3 months. I learnt so much about Munich, Railway Acoustics and myself. I have a friend who comes from Munich so he helped show me around.
My third year individual project is the construction and consequent testing of a 1/5th scale model rail facility. Essentially, I've designed a railway track model which is 2 metres long and the hope is that it can be used by future undergraduates or postgraduates to test various aspects of track noise. I've been testing the radiation ratio of the rails and the impact upon that of the sleepers and ballast.
Everything I learnt in Germany about railways has really propelled me into the research for this project. I didn't do much in Germany about what I'm testing but the techniques are similar and my time abroad really helped develop an interest in the subject as a whole.
Next year I'm taking a year out to work in Winchester at a company called Arup as an Industrial Trainee. I'll be learning the ropes whilst helping with the vast range of projects they deal with. They're involved heavily with the HS2 project so I suspect some of the work will be focussed on the noise impact of that. Their speciality in Winchester has always been the acoustics of performing spaces however and that's definitely an area where I could learn so much.
I would advise others to consider work placements without a doubt, I can say that jumping at the opportunity to work in a foreign country was the best thing decision I've made since deciding to study at Southampton. The ability to put your knowledge into practice just gives this sense of achievement that make the hard work at a library desk worth it. The placement has also been a conversation starter, door opener and I improved my skills while I was out there.