about SBAC > sbac at work > recruitment and secondment > secondments and industrial placements > Jenny Persson

Six months at SBAC in London, UK, working on the National Aerospace Technology Strategy (NATS) gave me an insight into industry/government relationships. It also proved a good grounding to prepare a bid for a collaborative research project that was not only successful, but made me its programme manager.

I work in Rolls-Royce's Strategic Research Centre in Derby and it has been a real whirlwind since I began in 2003 as an industrial trainee. I worked on a project to analyse the lifecycle of an industrial Trent combined cycle power unit, and I continued with 15 months of graduate trainee placements before starting my SBAC secondment.

Coming from life in rural Sweden, even Derby seems a big city to me, so living in London was certainly very different, but the work was interesting; amongst other things I had to write a NATS brochure for initial use at the Farnborough International Airshow, and I worked on the industry's environmental research priorities, which were placed in the contact of both UK's NATS programmes and the similar European Framework programmes.

I developed a better understanding of industry-level policy issues and how industry and government work together. I now have a greater knowledge of project management, which has been useful in putting together the research project proposal, and certainly improved my communication skills, as well as developing a useful network of contacts.

Since returning to Rolls-Royce, I have been assigned as the project leader for a DTI funded project and I'm currently developing the strategy, scope of work and collaboration agreement. I have to say that the knowledge I gained in SBAC has been essential in enabling me to take on such a high profile role this early on in my career.