Industry benefits from student gap year innovation

Kate Earnshaw, a 19-year-old gap year engineering student from Sheffield, has won the EEF/Year in Industry award

Kate (pictured with EEF director general Martin Temple) spent her gap year before university with Firth Rixson Group, an engineering company in Sheffield which produces components for the aerospace, railway and oil and gas industries. She led an investigation into the failure rates on several product lines following a heat treatment process, not only solving the problem relating to the failure of parts but calculating a significant potential for greater capacity.

Her recommended new software system and furnace will increase capacity by an extra 12,000 per furnace per day and has also triggered changes at other Firth Rixson sites.

Year in Industry is a national programme providing high calibre, pre-university students with experience of real project work in industry which significantly enhances their degree and employment prospects. Twentysix per cent of Year in Industry students go on to gain first class honours compared to the national average of 10%.