Erin Fu

I am currently at ARUP in their Leeds office where I am a transport planner within the North and West Yorkshire Planning team. My responsibilities include supporting modelling, transport economics appraisal and data analysis and report writing in many different types of transport planning projects including highways, strategic planning, development planning, junction design, railway planning and master planning.

My experience at ITS helped in my job and career, particularly with a basic understanding of transport planning principles and how different aspect work together. The events like Metropoly, the Europe Trip and conference opportunities provided by ITS also helped my understanding of how the industry is structured and how different organisations support each other in the whole system.

The ITS Employer visits supported me the most on my job-hunting process in UK. I would highly recommend them. There was no Mentor scheme in my year, but I was very lucky to be the first year mentor and help my mentee to hunt a job in the transfer period from a transport student into the industry.

Before studying here I compared the transport modules from ITS to other universities that have a transport master course, I realised ITS has most interesting and up-to-date module structure and multi-discipline research groups, that is why I choose it eventually.

My advice to students interested in this course and a career in transport is to explore as much as you can of different aspects in transport while you are at university, transport is more than what you think. Learn more and treasure the knowledge you can only learn from university not just a working environment. For career advice; plan in advance and get help from the careers centre and the university.

When I think of the highlight of my career, I explore almost all type of work in my first 2 years, in which I was involved in more than 18 projects, including HS2, Heathrow airport and Highways England RIS1 and RIS2 future planning for 2020 and 20205. I did a map of what I achieved during these 2 years, which is very inspiration for my future work.

I decided to take part in the Industry Mentoring Scheme because I would like to help a transport student from their student period into professional career. I can understand it is not an easy time for anyone, and I have been in that situation before. This experience could help me with my communication skills, logical expressions and English (not my mother tongue) as well. To anyone considering taking part in the Industry Mentoring Scheme I would say, just do it or you will regret it. I highly recommend it.

My advice to other ITS international students who are seeking work in the transport sector is to understand the recruitment timeline and process. Understand the industry and different organisations in the industry and how they cooperate with each other. Be well prepared for every roll.