ConocoPhillips has been recruiting engineering graduates for its Humber refinery for more than 30 years. The refinery has a reputation throughout the company for producing top class engineers and leaders. Thus we can provide each graduate with the support and training essential to help the best graduates become the best they can be in whatever career path they choose to follow.

Upon joining the Humber refinery, new recruits will be given real responsibility from the start. On the first day you will be involved in meeting new colleagues, being introduced to a mentor and spending time in your new office. Your supervisor will have a list of projects ready for you - consisting of real jobs to work on from day one. ConocoPhillips believes that hands on experience of engineering problems is the best way to obtain that solid engineering base on which to build your future career. Your supervisor and colleagues will offer you plenty of support to help you find your feet.

Chemical Engineers

Within operating divisions, each engineer is supervised by a lead engineer and has responsibility for a number of refinery units. The role is one of unit monitoring and troubleshooting, working to ensure the units run as best they can between their scheduled shutdowns. It involves becoming part of the operating team, building trust and respect with operators. Responsibilities include maintenance and development of sophisticated unit monitoring tools and involvement in shutdown planning and execution.

The process design group is responsible for producing the process specifications for the vast majority of modifications that are made to the refinery. You will be given several projects to work on, taking the initial idea through scoping, review, initial cost estimate, production of final process design, detailed engineering and commissioning. Each project is executed on a team basis and as well as yourself there will be a project leader, operations representative and other discipline specialists such as rotating equipment, vessel design, civil or electrical depending upon the project. You will start on smaller projects but will quickly progress onto larger projects up to several million pounds in value of which you will be solely responsible for the process engineering design under the guidance of a lead engineer. You will often be working to deadlines but there will also be many projects which require you to take some time to think of the optimum solution, often working closely with operations and other engineering disciplines.

In the early years, engineers will move between different roles every two years. After five or six years at the refinery in an engineering role, you will begin to form an idea of your future career path.

Mechanical Engineers

The majority of engineers work in one of the operating divisions. The remainder work in a wide spread of engineering groups including: engineering support, inspection, fitness-for-service (FFS), reliability and project management.

Within the operating divisions, engineers are responsible for a number of refinery units/areas of plant. The role is one of maintenance and troubleshooting – working to ensure that the plant is available and run reliably between its scheduled shutdowns.

In the engineering support group there is an opportunity to gain the underlying principles of design fundamentals. The group consists of specialists in different fields including pressure equipment, piping, rotating equipment, materials and civil engineering.

The inspection group ensure the safe condition of the plant. They plan and guard against numerous degradation mechanisms to relevant time-frames and use a wide variety of techniques and methods to monitor this.

The fitness-for-service group perform design assessments on degraded plant, to ensure that it is safe to run until at least the next planned maintenance outage. Here you have the opportunity to understand the design basis of various parts of the plant and can use your problem-solving skills.

Later in your career you may work in the project group where the vast majority of modifications made to the plant are managed. You will be given several projects to work on, from initial process design, through to scoping, review, initial cost estimate, detailed estimate and engineering, equipment specification and procurement, plus construction and commissioning.

ConocoPhillips has a training plan accredited by the I.Mech.E. and on joining the company you will be assigned a mentor who will be registered with them. You will be given encouragement and an opportunity to gain the competences required by the institution to become a chartered engineer.