Chilled water, hot coffee and a plane ticket to China

A small anecdote from a student’s life

As a part of my education as Marine Engineering & Technology Management, I had been granted an half year undergraduate internship at Novenco Marine & Offshore in Denmark, and here is a small story from my stay.

Not even a complete workweek went by before I found myself knee-deep in a very interesting and challenging project for a luxury cruise vessel, able to accommodate 544 people in total. As you might know, Novenco Marine & Offshore has been selected as supplier of the HVAC system for Ritz-Carltons luxury cruise vessel, build at the Astilleros Hijos de J. Barreras shipyard in Spain, and it was a part of this project, I suddenly had the responsibility for.

The demands for a low power consumption solution with easy maintenance and long life expectancy resulted in a set of high efficiency chiller units with VFD’s and a more complex automation solution, where I had the honor to be a part of primarily the automation part.

The first few weeks flew by with engineering, testing, fine-tuning, and a lot of coffee, because I was once told hydration is important. How well the preparations had been done would show one week later, as Novenco Marine & Offshore offered me a trip to Shanghai and Wuxi in China, to visit their production line and to follow this project the rest of the way, almost right to the doorstep.

A trip later and a small +7 hour adjustment on my wrist watch, I stood in front of the chiller units, which were no longer some CAD-drawings on a piece of printed paper, but instead a piece of Novenco-blue-beauty. The testing began and went flawlessly all the way, which meant the units could be handed over for the final FAT and I could enjoy a well-deserved weekend in Shanghai city center, before heading home to another project.

Even though the internship is still in progress, it has already resulted in a huge amount of experiences, knowledge, opportunities, challenges and last but not least a bunch of kind people who have welcomed me with open arms.

At the school, you learn many things in order to be well prepared for the real life, but you can simply not learn everything, and what was not learnt at the school, Novenco Marine & Offshore has definitely been helping me with. I will see you out there, and remember; we will be at the Copenhagen School of Marine Engineering and Technology Management at their Open House Arrangement at 11th of April.