Kylie Crump

Junior Digital Engineer

During the KiwiRail Internship Programme, I worked with three other amazing interns doing project support using software skills. As a team, we revamped the ‘Digital Engineering’ splash page on the KiwiRail website and built a 3D simulation of train shunting using the game development engine, Unreal Engine.

6.00 AM

We worked in a hybrid workplace, but I typically came into the office on Mondays. I woke up early to have breakfast and prepare for the day. I lived in the AUT dorms in the city at the time, so I caught a 20 min bus ride to Ellerslie and took a nice short walk to the office.

7:00AM

People tended to arrive at the office closer to 8 or 9am, so coming at 7am was peaceful and allowed me to setup my workstation and settle before my first meetings. During this time, I would get coffee at the local cafes with the other interns and have nice conversations with co-workers.

9.00 AM

I would have my first meetings at 9am where we would do our daily stand-ups with the other interns. We would catch up on our progress over the past day and identify any roadblocks or issues encountered. Other meetings were less regular, but they typically consisted of: Project asset handback, giving updates on our development, as well as information sessions for research and development.

10.00 AM

During times that I didn’t have meetings, I would be working on designing and developing the digital engineering page:

Or developing the shunting simulator:

Creating the digital engineering page involved the use of HTML, CSS and JavaScript which I was familiar with from my studies. However, developing the shunting simulator in Unreal Engine used a mix of C++ and the visual programming language Blueprints, both of which I had not worked with before. It was an incredible opportunity to upskill in this area while having autonomy over our development workflow. We also had an immense amount of support from the rest of the digital engineering team.

12.00 PM

I would go down to the break room with the other interns and have lunch together. Some days we would get Pita Pit from the downstairs food places.

1.00 PM

I spent the rest of the day supporting another digital engineer in the team by helping them update project information on the online collaborative environment Revizto. This involved downloading CAD files and drawings from contractors and adding/replacing them in the Revizto environment.

3.00 PM

I finished the day off by taking notes of what I worked on that day for my next daily stand-up. After that, I packed up my laptop and caught the bus back home.

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