Mechanical Engineering Industrial Placement 2024

Are you looking to gain valuable real world work experience and help positively impact the lives of others?

A GSK internship offers you the opportunity to kickstart your career – to take on a real role with genuine impact. You’ll take on challenging tasks within live projects or assignments. You’ll also get to learn from others in your team and other parts of GSK whilst developing your skills and gaining valuable experience for wherever the future takes you.

Global Supply Chain (GSC) is the group within GSK that is responsible for making and supplying medicines and vaccines across the globe. At our manufacturing sites we produce over 2.3 billion medication packs and vaccines doses to 90% of the world's countries.

A Mechanical Engineering placement in one of our manufacturing sites will give you a hands-on practical application of the theory from university. Our sites produce a range of products, (e.g., tablets, inhalers, creams and vaccines) to positively impact health in such areas as skin and infectious diseases, asthma and HIV.

During your placement with us, you’ll gain experience in areas such as:

• Developing a thorough understanding of the equipment, plant and processes used at the site including mechanical design of systems and the ability to problem solve.
• Supporting delivery of the Mechanical, Inspection and Reliability programmes.
• Investigating new engineering technologies to improve plant and maintenance techniques.
• Development and implementation of maintenance best practice
• Specifying new equipment and components
• Performing root cause analysis investigations
• Contributing to safety and quality risk assessments
• Carrying out continuous improvement activities to ensure good manufacturing practice.
• Developing skills for leading and managing groups of peers or contractors to achieve the above.
• Developing skills in project management and planning projects such as plant modifications, building turnarounds, capital projects and production line safety improvements
• Experience a range of manufacturing processes, such as: inhaler manufacture, dry blending, milling, enzyme extraction, solids separation, evaporation, powder mixing and transfer, granulation, coring, tablet compression, film coating of tablets, roller compaction, milling, tablet or bottle filling.

Whichever role you go into you will be applying the skills you already have and developing new skills such as team working, effective communication and time management. You will work with and learn from an experienced team of multi-disciplined engineers. They will coach and mentor you during your year to help you achieve your potential.

Who are we looking for?

• A passion for engineering in a pharmaceutical manufacturing.
• Attention to detail.
• Strong analytical skills
• To be organized with a drive to get things done.
• To be a team player
• Continuous improvement mindset
• Excel / Data skills
• An interest in digital solutions will be required for some roles.
• Able to demonstrate qualities aligned with GSK Culture

Please read below about the 4 different locations/roles we are recruiting for across our Industrial Placements. Please note, these are distinct placements and so when you apply you will be able to select preferences of where you would like to be placed if successful. We will accommodate your preference where possible.

Role/Location 1: Barnard Castle

The Barnard Castle site is located in the Northeast of England and is sited within the County Durham countryside. Barnard Castle is a key secondary site for GSK with a large number of New Products coming through development at site. We manufacture and supply a huge range of different pharmaceutical products from Sterile Products (Syringes and Vials) to Liquid Inhalations and Dermatologicals.   We have recently opened a new state of the art aseptic digital facility producing biopharmaceuticals.

We have a variety of roles for mechanical engineers focussing on improving equipment, reliability and production performance and/or delivering a range of new manufacturing, packaging and utilities equipment. As a placement student you could be based in one of a number of teams - the Capital Projects, equipment engineering or reliability.

Working in our Capital Projects team puts your university knowledge into practical applications. This role may include identifying and working on process improvement work and new product or process projects as well as investigating deviations, writing technical reports and assisting in delivery of capital projects to ensure key milestones are met.

In Equipment Engineering you will support the team to ensure that new and existing pieces of equipment are correctly installed/commissioned, and validation is completed on time and in budget. This will involve developing skills with mechanical and automation systems to control pharmaceutical equipment including filling and packaging as well as ancillary equipment.

As a placement student in Reliability Engineering, you will be responsible for driving improvements in equipment reliability through use and analysis of Condition Based Monitoring techniques and best-practice maintenance. You will identify and correct repetitive failures through analysis of equipment history and application of technical skills, ingenuity, and use of the most effective and appropriate tools and techniques. You will work with other departments to advise on the Site Maintenance Strategy. Support and mentoring will be provided from the Reliability and Operational Engineering Teams. Further mentoring and guidance can be provided from various functions such as Operational Excellence Practitioners, Process, Electrical, Control Engineers as well as many other functions.

Role/Location 2: Montrose

Our 45-acre primary manufacturing site at Montrose is located between the North Sea and the Angus Glens and is within easy reach of Dundee and Aberdeen. It is our largest UK chemical manufacturing facility which celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2022. The site has state-of-the-art manufacturing and testing facilities and produces a wide range of active ingredients for some of our most important medicines including respiratory, HIV and dermatological products. Every day, an estimated 30 million people take a medicine that includes ingredients from Montrose.

A placement opportunity at Montrose exists in the Plant Engineering team. Working in this technical team will provide you with the opportunity to investigate and solve mechanical problems to ensure manufacturing of key medicines continues and taking actions to prevent recurrence of the similar issues in the future. This role will involve multi-disciplinary team working with Operations, Environment, Health & Safety (EHS), Quality and Manufacturing Science and Technology (MSAT) functions. You will be encouraged to bring creativity to drive continuous improvement in the areas of safety, quality and waste. Mentoring and support will be provided to enable you to become a named Plant Engineering contact for one of our key production buildings delivering active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).

Role/Location 3: Ware

Ware is the largest GSK site in the UK with a thriving early talent community. The Ware Global Supply Chain site manufactures and supplies oral solid dose tablets (for HIV and oncology) and respiratory devices (for asthma and COPD) to over 140 countries, as well as to patients participating in clinical trials, playing a key role in new product introduction. Ware site is located less than a mile from the station, with regular rail links through to London Liverpool Street, taking around 45 minutes.

You will be working in the pharmaceutical engineering team helping us to deliver safety, quality and efficiency improvements while developing your engineering knowledge and skills. Several opportunities are available at this site.

Utilities & Facilities (U&F)

You will work with the team to solve day to day problems on a huge variety of equipment such as boilers, steam lines, compressed air, HVACs and water plants. As well as problem solving on equipment, there are opportunities for working with data to generate, and subsequently implement, continuous improvement ideas and for managing and implementing changes, all whilst getting a thorough understanding of the mechanical equipment, processes and plant.

Respiratory Value Stream

Another role exists to work in our respiratory value streams, which involves day to day problem solving, using data to review and improve equipment efficiencies, and delivering reliability projects in our packing, micronizing, filling, or assembly lines. You will develop a thorough understanding of the equipment, plant and processes used at the site including mechanical design of systems and the ability to problem solve.

Oral Solids Dose (OSD) Value stream

There is a role within the Oral Solid Dose Value Stream which is an opportunity to solve day to day problems on equipment, as well as to deliver improvement projects across the manufacturing processes, equipment and plant. You will work in our brand new, state of the art manufacturing facility, designed to deliver on GSK’s new product launch ambitions.

Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) team

An opportunity in the EHS team allows you to get involved in the technical elements of EHS, including environmental monitoring and control, high hazard programs including process, machinery and electrical safety, whilst gaining exposure to manufacturing, Utilities & Facilities, laboratories and warehouse operations.

Role/Location 4: Worthing

The Worthing site manufactures more than 34 million packs of antibiotics each year, and our 60-year legacy has seen generations of talented people proudly producing our high-quality medicines for patients around the globe. The Worthing site is situated approximately 2 miles from the South Coast and located at the foot of the picturesque South Downs; We are also only 15 miles from the cosmopolitan and cultural city of Brighton and Hove. Worthing boasts the opportunity to combine city, countryside and coast all in one location, and even offers rail links to London in under 90 minutes.

There are several roles available for placement students at GSK Worthing supporting our production, technical and utilities & facilities teams.

The production team is spread between our Manufacturing plant and our Packaging plant. Within the Manufacturing area, you will be working with highly competent engineers within a highly regulated environment, on equipment which produced numerous API’s. The current Manufacturing plant is in the early stages of investment, which is planned to continue over the next few years. This gives an exciting opportunity for an IP student to gain insights into upgrading a manufacturing facility.

When working within the packaging department, you will experience high speed packaging lines, and the importance of a strong reliability programme, to maintain successful OEE.

In our production and technical teams, you will have the opportunity to support day to operations by conducting root cause analysis to keep our processes and equipment running to meet our high specifications in quality and EHS. You will be involved in local improvement programmes, which will include working across multi-disciplined areas across the site.

The utilities and facilities team supports Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) critical systems (water, HVAC, steam, compressed etc.), industrial utilities (waste treatment, chillers, cooling towers) and is the interface with our 3rd party service providers for both our main manufacturing site and our R&D facility.

Investment has been made within the Utilities & Facilities department to reduce the oversized infrastructure. This has included removing industrial shell and tube boilers and replacing with Steam Generators. New air compressors have also recently been installed. Further capital investment is being made to create the new Wastewater Treatment plant, improve the sites condensate recovery, as well as investigating the potential to replace the current site chilled water distribution system. With the investment within the area, this would be a good opportunity for someone that is keen to learn and/or build on their capabilities within a Utilities facility.

These placement opportunities on the Worthing site are particularly suited to IP’s who would like to work across multi-skilled and multi-disciplined teams to build on their engineering knowledge across numerous sectors within the business.

What do we offer you?

• Salary of £21,400, plus a bonus
• Access to GSK resources, including employee assistance programmes, private healthcare and well-being programs.
• On-the-job experience, training and development, delivered through a mixture of coaching and mentoring
• A GSK placement which gives you the opportunity to take on a real role with genuine impact
• You will join IPUnite, GSK’s community of over 250 students across all UK sites and business areas, run by the Industrial Placement students committee
• Once you accept your offer you will be invited to join LinkedIn groups and pre-joining webinars, to enable you to connect and network with new students