Work Experience: Defence Industry

Westland Helicopters (2005)
Somerset


Westlands, is a helicopter manufacterer based in Yeovil, Somerset. Their most notable helicopters include the Lynx, Sea King and Gazelle, as well as having some involvement in the servicing of Apache helicopters.

My time was spent in the Programming section. The Programming department, is concerned with managing the overall construction of the helicopters made. Part of their role is providing reasonable forecasts for the likely delivery of contracts.

Some of my time at Westlands was spent learning about the different functions of the company (as well as being blown away by some of the jobs, such as the test pilots). This lead to me meeting various people from lawyers, accountants, engineers, test pilots and human resource managers.
I was very impressed by the company and by the scale of what they did. However, I was shocked to find out whilst there that the 'on time and on budget contract' is something of a rarity within their industry (due to long lead times and the changing requirements of the helicopters on order).