Raeph Mason

6.00 AM

After my third snoozed alarm goes off, it’s time to get up and start my day. I roll out of bed and face the morning struggle for the bathroom with my housemates. I get ready, grab my leftovers from the night before and jump in the car for a quick 20min drive down the Ipswich Motorway – avoiding traffic as best as I can.

7.30 AM

I arrive at the office and after saying a quick hello to everyone. I drop my bag at my ever-changing hot desk. I then complete the daily ritual of grabbing a coffee at MILVEHCOE’s very own café with a couple of my colleagues.

8.00 AM

I log into my emails and check my calendar to plan the day ahead. I am currently in a specialist design team based at MILVEHCOE. Today, my mentor has tasked me with modelling and drafting a new part, so I’ll set up a quick meeting to discuss the task in further detail and understand the requirements.

9.00 AM

My meeting is complete and I’m back at my desk, so it’s time to boot up my laptop. I load up my model and get ready for a CAD session by making use of my noise-cancelling headphones to limit distractions in the office.

10.00 AM

I take a break from CAD to attend my weekly update meeting, where all the engineers within the team meet to update our manager on the status of our work. The team I am a part of is responsible for both the design and integration of protection related systems on all vehicles developed at RDA. Time constraints are critical, so it is important that everyone is on the same page in regard to the work that needs to be done. This week, I updated my team on my two design tasks and the issues which have come up throughout the previous week.

12.00 PM

It’s time to grab lunch. My colleagues and I walk to the on-site cafeteria, then sit outside in the sun to defrost from the engineering buildings' air-con. We catch up on what we got up to on the weekend. Every lunch is a game of who’s the first to go back to work; we know that once one person returns to the office, it’s time for us all to stop stalling.

12.45 PM

Lunch is over and I return to work. I continue with my modelling work and run into an issue with integration, so I chuck on my high vis and steel caps and walk over to the PWB with one of the senior engineers to have a look at the area of the vehicle in question. The great thing about working at Rheinmetall as a mechanical engineer is you can only learn so much from a CAD model, and with RDA’s manufacturing facility only a 50m walk from the engineering office, you can always get a firsthand look at the vehicles you are working on.

2.00 PM

I set up my model on inbuilt software to run a quick preliminary simulation to ensure that my hand calcs are correct. As they say, “measure twice, cut once.” While I wait for the simulation to complete, I go grab my second coffee of the day.

3.00 PM

My simulation’s worked, so I set up my final meeting of the day with one of the senior engineers to show them the model and get the tick of approval on the primary structure. I receive some feedback and ensure I note down the action items from the discussion to progress my model further.

5.00 PM

Time to go home. I have a quick chat on my way out of the office with my colleagues before I jump in the car and drive to the gym and shops, and prepare myself for the day to come.

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