Engineering

Overview

The energy industry faces a wide range of challenges and our chemical and process engineers play important roles in delivering the innovation that takes our business forward. Chemical and process engineering comprises of the science and technology which underpins the manufacturing and processing of substances, such as crude oil, liquid fuels and chemicals. The skills and knowledge of our chemical and process engineers will be used to develop new technologies and design production or process plants, as well as to monitor and optimize their operation.

Join chemical and process engineering and the knowledge and expertise you gain working alongside good people will help us make both technical and strategic decisions that determine the success of our business.

Your role and responsibilities

As one of our chemical and process engineers, your role may cover the design and optimal operation of:

• Oil and gas production facilities
• Oil refineries
• Petrochemical plants
• Or you could play an important role in developing new technologies, for example producing transport fuels and chemicals from unconventional resources, such as natural gas and biomass.

As a graduate, you could work within research and development, applying your knowledge and understanding of science and technology to the development of new technologies such as manufacturing transport fuels from alternative raw materials or you might even work on the design and operation of an oil refinery or petrochemical plant. There really is a diverse range of options for you.

The day you begin, you'll take on world class projects. You'll also play a vital role throughout a number of crucial stages of projects across bp. That's because, more than any other discipline, chemical engineering is fully integrated with several other areas of our business. Your expertise will help set the strategy and inform the key technical decisions that determine the success of our projects and our business.

Overview

Completions engineers are part of the wells discipline and bp’s global wells organization (GWO). GWO is an operating function whose goal is to deliver safe, compliant, and reliable wells. 

Completions engineers are responsible for ensuring that the well is installed with the correct equipment so that the productivity and longevity of the well is maximized. Work in this area involves recommending the type of completion concept that should be used to maximize recovery of oil and/or gas, recommending completion optimization techniques in existing fields, and writing programmes to ensure appropriate completion installations are deployed safely and to bp and regulatory standards. 

Some of the operations completions engineers are involved with include completion installation, well testing, and increasing well productivity through stimulation techniques. As part of an expert team, a completions engineer designs, plans, and supports rig operations, providing a key link between drilling, reservoir engineering, and petroleum engineering teams. This discipline requires knowledge of metallurgy, materials, chemical engineering, and physics. 

Your role and responsibilities 

Much of your first year as a completions engineer may be spent at a rig site, learning the fundamentals of operations. Here you will provide technical support to the rig site team in addition to developing your knowledge of drilling, completions, and interventions operations in bp’s GWO. 

Typically, your second year will be office-based, conducting detailed planning and design work with regular field trips. As a base for all of this, you must have a strong academic record in an engineering subject. This must be matched by your willingness to learn and to undertake shift work onshore or offshore, in interesting and challenging environments. 

As part of this role you are required to work in a diverse, multi-disciplined team that involves geologists, reservoir engineers, drilling engineers, equipment service company representatives, and production operations teams to ensure that the well plan satisfies all company objectives. 

As you continue to develop in this technical role, you will be guided by the structured path, or roadmap, which is part of an early to mid-career development for completions engineers. This roadmap outlines on-the-job experiences, resources and formal training to help you develop and rapidly build professional depth in order to reach the technical standards required for senior completions engineer status. 

As a completions engineer, you could:

• Evaluate and select different completion options using detailed risk/benefit and cost/benefit analysis.
• Participate in the preparation of completions programmes.
• Prepare cost and time estimates for completions operations.
• Develop an understanding of a variety of complex completions equipment and make sure machinery is tested and prepared in time for on-site operations.
• Use various software (e.g. tubing design, stimulation, etc.) to ensure the correct completions design is chosen for the specific well.
• Work very closely with other disciplines like drilling, interventions, petroleum, and reservoir engineering in addition to purchasing and contracting.
• Provide daily engineering oversight to ensure operations are conducted safely and as planned.
• Participate in all safety & environment related activities within the team.
  

Overview

Working in construction, you will be in the frontline delivering safe and compliant projects by ensuring that we are working smarter, eliminating waste and performance managing contractors and suppliers rigorously so that we hand over defect-free facilities.

As new discoveries are made you will need to be prepared to work in harsh and challenging conditions to deliver projects from remoter areas, deeper waters, more extreme climates and more complex supply chains. However there will be the reward and satisfaction of being part of a team delivering some of the largest, most ambitious, advanced and exciting developments in the industry.

Your role and responsibilities

Construction is about planning the physical build and overseeing its execution to quality, cost and schedule targets; implementing inspection, verification and testing requirements; and ensuring that design intent and technical integrity are carried through from design. Your input will range from developing construction plans, to the safe management of site activities during the building of facilities.

As a construction engineer in bp you could be:

• Participating in developing the construction strategy, including assessment of options such as the potential locations for construction, potential for modularization vs. stick build, major constraints and requirements of local governments, the risks such as country capability and contractor total workload.
• Working with engineering and design teams to ensure the feasibility of transportation, installation, lifting and construction requirements.
• Understanding and planning the requirements for, and availability, of major construction equipment.
• Verifying conformance to functionality and clarifying of technical specs.
• Assisting in monitoring and controlling construction schedule and cost.
• Providing diligence in managing and controlling site changes.
• Monitoring contractor performance, investigating problem areas and coordinating follow-up solutions and interventions.

As your experience and capability develops your career should give you the opportunity to:

• Lead multi-discipline teams of bp and agency/contractor personnel.
• Consider the wider aspect beyond the immediate project goals, i.e. bp’s business objectives, role in the local community etc.
• Manage the full lifecycle of the project construction programme.
• Set construction standards, procedures and practices and embed these within construction teams.

Overview

Control & automation engineering enables a relatively small number of operators to have full control of complex manufacturing plants, which include our chemical and biofuels plants, oil refineries and oil and gas production facilities. It’s the control & automation engineer’s job to optimize production and enhance safety by making improvements to process control, as well as designing and maintaining the integrated control and safety systems (ICSS) that house these controls.

You could also go into a career in operations critical telecommunications (OCT). These are the highly reliable and resilient communication systems required for day-to-day safe operation and incident management on bp assets around the world. Whether it covers navigation, hazard monitoring, or communicating and transferring information within our organization, these systems must be continuously available, even during incidents, while the process plant is being made safe.

The work can also encompass subsea control systems for our subsea facilities used in both shallow and deep water offshore installations.

Your role and responsibilities

As a graduate working in control & automation engineering or OCT, you’ll:

• Contribute to the safe and efficient running of complex manufacturing systems.
• Design and build process plant control systems; which means incredible variety. One day you could find yourself in London, working out the best way to control a biofuels reactor; the next, you could be working on installing an advanced control system (a kind of autopilot) for an oil platform in the Caspian Sea.
• Work with great people and the latest technologies; from drag-and-drop programmable control and safety systems, to advanced computer algorithms and miniature sensors through to wireless technologies.

Wherever you work, you’ll develop a broad range of technical and engineering management skills, across a diverse range of control and automation, telecommunications and other related systems, often deployed in harsh operating environments around the globe.

The Challenge Programme will give you the knowledge and experience to ultimately choose a career in areas ranging from control and automation or operations critical telecommunications to subsea control systems or even instruments and protective systems and electrical engineering. You could be a control & automation engineer on a major project or on a key operating site, or in a flagship R&D programme. You could even become a technical specialist or move into a more generalist role in projects and operations and ultimately progress towards a senior management position.

Overview

Drilling engineers are a part of the wells discipline and bp’s global wells organization (GWO). GWO is an operating function whose goal is to deliver safe, compliant, and reliable wells. In GWO, drilling engineers take part in engineering activity covering the planning, programme preparation, and execution of drilling operations within the wells team. 

As a drilling engineer, you are involved in designing, planning and programming of drilling activities. During construction of the well, you are responsible for supporting rig operations and ensuring the well is built safely and within budget. Drilling engineers support rig operations to get to the target zone and design the well to withstand conditions that may be experienced when the well is put on production or injection. There are many types of well programmes including exploration wells, appraising existing prospects and production wells in established acreage.

Your role and responsibilities 

Much of your first year as a drilling engineer may be spent at a rig site, learning the fundamentals of operations. Here you will provide technical support to the rig site team in addition to developing your knowledge of drilling, completions, and interventions operations in bp’s GWO. Typically, your second year will be office-based, conducting detailed planning and design work with regular field trips. As a base for all of this, you must have a strong academic record in an engineering subject. This must be matched by your willingness to learn and to undertake shift work onshore or offshore, in interesting and challenging environments. 

As part of this role you are required to work in a diverse, multi-disciplined team that involves geologists, reservoir engineers, completions engineers, equipment service company representatives, and production operations teams to ensure that the well plan satisfies all company objectives. 

As you continue to develop in this technical role, you will be guided by the structured path, or roadmap, which is part of early to mid-career development for drilling engineers. This roadmap outlines on-the-job experiences, resources and formal training to help you develop and rapidly build professional depth in order to reach the technical standards required for senior drilling engineer status. 

As a drilling engineer, you could:

• Participate in the preparation of drilling programmes.
• Prepare cost and time estimates for drilling operations.
• Ensure equipment is available for prompt delivery to the rig.
• Prepare drilling engineering modelling as required to support planning and ongoing drilling operations.
• Collect and analyze data to assist in optimizing rig-site drilling activities and future well programmes, such as torque and drag, and hole cleaning.
• Perform calculations such as hydraulics, leak off tests, casing/tubing tallies, cement volumes, etc.
• Promote teamwork attitude between bp and third parties engaged in well delivery.
• Ensure the construction of the well to bp and regulatory requirements.
• Participate in all safety and environmental related activity within the team.
• Visit service company yards to observe equipment tests, make up equipment, and learn.

Overview

Electrical power is a fundamental requirement for all of bp’s businesses. Electrical systems provide light, heat and energy and drive motors for rotating equipment, providing the motive power to move products to the marketplace, and the power for all related control systems.

As an Electrical Engineer, you’ll ensure existing production plants remain safe and reliable by effectively using manpower and equipment to carry out electrical maintenance, repairs and improvements. For new plants, like onshore oil and gas processing plants and offshore oil and gas production platforms, you will design all the electrical systems and equipment. Covering generators, transformers and electric motors, your hard work will ensure power is produced and used in the safest, most efficient and cost-effective way.

Your role and responsibilities

In the early development part of your career, you may work in cross-discipline engineering. This work is designed to build your core knowledge of key functions including:

• How industrial electrical systems work.
• How electrical equipment can be safely used in potentially hazardous areas.
• How to analyse system performance to maximize safety, efficiency and reliability.

Through further opportunities that could take you to our sites around the world, you’ll develop all the skills you need as you work towards potentially becoming an electrical technical advisor or a chief engineer. This will give you exposure to a wide range of technical and development experiences that are specifically designed to get you to chartered engineer status and beyond.

Your role and responsibilities

From the start of your career with bp, you’ll be part of our Endeavour Programme – our shipping graduate development scheme that is accredited with the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). 

You’ll begin at our flagship site at Sunbury-on-Thames (UK), where you’ll find out all about our business before undertaking a programme of development in diverse disciplines and locations. You could gain experience in shipbuilding, equipment commissioning and repair, applying your electrical or instrumentation and control knowledge in technically challenging environments. 

Usually within the first year, you’ll also have an opportunity to undertake a placement, normally in Europe, with a class society – giving you invaluable experience. As you develop, you could have the opportunity to travel further afield. 

Development opportunities

The shipping graduate programme typically is a four-year or two-plus-two-year scheme, with placements of varying length. Examples of current placements include the:

• Engineering team
• Projects technical team (Sunbury-on-Thames, UK-based and part-based in Korea for new builds)
• Fleet support team (UK and Singapore-based)
• Class society
• North Sea (Aberdeen-based)

In the first two years, your placements will be planned for you but as you gain experience in the business, you’ll be expected to manage your own career path. That’s not to say you’ll be left to your own devices. We’re committed to your development and success, so you’ll be monitored and encouraged every step of the way by your mentor and line manager. 

Your future 

Once you reach the end of the programme, there are a number of options for further development and broadening of your skills. Some graduates go on to pursue leadership roles, some choose technical specialisms and some try other disciplines. 

Most recently, graduates have gone into the following teams:

• Fleet support team
• Projects technical team
• North Sea support to FPSO (floating production, storage and offloading vessel) project. 

Whichever route you pursue, we can offer you a thoroughly rewarding career that’s a mix of what you’re good at, what you like to do and what our business needs. Locations We require that all graduates be flexible as to geographical location (within the UK) for the duration of the programme.

Overview

The health, safety and environment (HSE) discipline has been established in support of bp’s clearly stated goals of:

• No accidents
• No harm to people
• No damage to the environment

Our environmental discipline helps us ensure the safe, reliable and compliant operation of our sites by overseeing our controlled impact on the environment and our commitment to doing the right thing today and tomorrow, so that there’s no long-term damage to the planet or its people.

By doing this to the standards we set ourselves we create:

• An enhanced reputation
• A successful, sustainable business
• More reliable operations
• Higher levels of retention and motivation among our employees

Your role and responsibilities

If you join as one of our environmental specialists you’ll support operations, wells, exploration, project teams or government agencies by:

• Liaising with regulators and supporting environmental reporting and regulatory compliance.
• Assisting, updating and/or preparing environmental plans and procedures.
• Developing and implementing environmental management programmes.
• Monitoring and auditing environmental performance.
• Advising on cultural heritage and reducing impact on local communities.
• Using our own group standards to ensure best practice, manage environmental challenges and generate benefits for society.
• Training the workforce on specific issues.

As your experience and capability develops, you will have the chance to support our businesses worldwide in measuring and managing their environmental impact. Alternatively, you could support the deployment of technology or pursue opportunities in a technical specialism such as atmospheric emissions, marine discharges, or remediation.

Overview

Even though bp conducts its business in a complex and volatile world nothing is more important than the health and safety of our employees, contractors, customers and communities in which we operate. Energy demand, increasing societal expectations and technical challenges require rigorous assessment and management of the potential risks and our health, safety and environment (HSE) goals are clearly stated as:

• No accidents
• No harm to people
• No damage to the environment

bp’s HSE discipline has been established to provide expertise, guidance and verification in support of achieving these goals and to drive safe, compliant and reliable operations across the company.

Your role and responsibilities

Joining as part of our health and safety community you will develop your own skills while assuring that our facilities are designed and operated in a manner which protects personal safety, prevents major accidents and safeguards the integrity and security of our work sites.

So that HSE objectives are understood, integrated, and given equal weighting alongside other business drivers such as cost and schedule, these roles provide an opportunity to engage and communicate across all aspects and levels of the company.

When you first join, it’s likely that you’ll work in a team responsible for making sure risk is systematically and proactively managed by ensuring alignment and compliance with policy, standards, regulations and statutory requirements.

As your experience and capability develops, you could:

• Lead multi-discipline teams of bp and agency/contractor personnel.
• Consider the bigger picture i.e. bp’s business objectives and role in the local community.
• Set Health and safety standards, procedures and practices and embed these within project, drilling or operations teams.
• Coach teams and individuals to assure that they have the tools, training and knowledge to work safely.  
  

Overview

The instrument and protective systems (I&PS) engineering and measurement engineering sub-disciplines are related, because they both involve sensor technology as a foundation.

Instruments and protective systems consists of three primary specialist areas including field instrumentation, safety instrumented systems (SIS), and fire and gas systems. It also includes the infrastructure (wiring, tubing, junction boxes, etc) which are used for communicating with these systems.

Field instrumentation is used to measure process parameters (such as pressure, temperature, flow, level, etc). It is also used to control through the use of final elements (e.g. using an automated valve to control flow or a variable speed drive on a pump). Instrumentation is critical in allowing process conditions to be monitored, while final elements are used to control within the prescribed facility operating envelope.

A safety instrumented system is a separate layer of protection, which acts independently of the other instrumentation and final elements for the purpose of taking the plant to a safe state if predetermined operating conditions are exceeded. SIS must be designed to stringent international standards which govern how they are to be identified, engineered, installed, operated and tested.

Finally, fire and gas systems monitor for unexpected releases, and act to isolate the process and prevent escalation to a fire or explosion.

Measurement engineering consists of an engineered set of hardware and software controls that are focused on the measurement of the quantity and quality of hydrocarbon production. bp’s measurement and metering engineers measure process variables, including pressure, temperature, flow, level and composition, and perform higher level tasks such as calculating flow measurement data for commercial and regulatory use.

In many cases, these measurement systems are the basis for meeting international standards, environmental and in-country revenue and taxation regulations. They provide process and production data for control, optimization and allocation of production revenue, and it’s true to say that energy supplies of whole countries often depend on these systems. In fact, these systems are tied directly to our licence to operate. That’s why bp’s measurement engineers are committed to delivering excellence without compromising safety.

I&PS and measurement technologies are rapidly changing as new sensor technologies, processor capability and software development result in more accurate, reliable, and faster devices. I&PS and measurement engineers are always working to use the latest technologies to solve operational and reliability challenges in environments that range from harsh North Sea conditions to hot Saharan desert, to kilometres below the Gulf of Mexico. Keeping pace with technology developments and changes is challenging and very exciting.

Your role and responsibilities

As a graduate, you’ll work within a team of experienced engineers who will mentor and coach you to develop your talents. You could find yourself:

• Problem-solving and carrying out feasibility studies, standards familiarization and reliability reviews. This will expose you to a range of equipment from field sensors to state-of-the-art control systems.
• Working as part of a global, multi-disciplinary support team in an advanced collaborative environment supporting critical production operations.
• Working on a project to design and build process plant safety systems using the latest available technology.

The range of opportunities and experiences is vast and you can pursue your own particular interests.

Typical initial job roles include troubleshooting, collating statistical and measurement information, commissioning new equipment, becoming involved in maintenance outages or supporting minor modifications. You will get hands-on exposure to measurement, instruments and protective systems in a plant or operating environment. This plant hands-on experience is fundamental in allowing your engineering talents to achieve their full potential.

On completion of the challenge programme, you’ll have the foundational I&PS and Measurement knowledge and experience to specialize further and deepen your technical knowledge and abilities.

This can be working at an asset where you’ll provide engineering support for an operating facility, by troubleshooting operational problems or finding unique ways to solve challenging maintenance issues.

It could also be working on a major project, where you’ll be part of a team that conceptualizes a new facility, works on the design and engineering and even potentially provides construction and installation support, commissioning and start-up assistance. You could be part of a central engineering team, which provides regional or global engineering support by providing deep technical knowledge and problem-solving expertise.

The central engineering team has the opportunity to share lessons from across bp, and turn these into engineering practices that are used throughout the company to engineer and operate bp facilities. Facilities include offshore oil and gas production platforms, floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels, petrochemical complexes and transportation systems.

There are a wide range of experiences with regards to instruments and protective systems or measurement. You could run a trial of a new type of sensory instrument, and work with the vendor to apply it to real-world challenges.

You might be involved in a ‘hot-cutover’ where you change-out ageing instruments and controls to a new ‘state-of-the-art’ instrumentation and control system. You might even develop a new tool to allow calculation of the probability of failure on demand of an SIS based on prior-use failure data gathered at your facility, and then optimize the testing interval to achieve target risk levels, and avoid spurious shutdowns.

The range of experiences is diverse, based on opportunity, ability and your drive to make a greater difference.

I&PS or measurement engineering positions are site-based or in central hubs around the world. You will have the opportunity to stay on a technical career path doing deep, specialized I&PS or measurement engineering. Alternately you could branch off to an engineering supervision, procurement support, a learning role, project management or other position that would leverage your I&PS and measurement knowledge in support of bp operations.

Overview

Interventions engineers are part of the wells discipline and bp’s global wells organization (GWO). GWO is an operating function whose goal is to deliver safe, compliant, and reliable wells. 

Working as a well interventions engineer, you will develop creative solutions and well programmes for operations to repair wellbores and optimize production rates over the life of the well. These types of operations are typically varied and involve acquiring surveillance data, performing well diagnostic tests to determine reasons for well loss of productivity, performing stimulation treatments, altering the state of the well for different service, enhancing its production, restoring the integrity of the wellbore, and eventually plugging and abandoning the wellbore at the end the useful well life. 

The well interventions discipline requires knowledge of well construction design limitations, metallurgy, materials, chemical engineering, physics, process safety, and equipment and methods used to enter the wellbore under pressure. 

Your role and responsibilities 

Much of your first year as an interventions engineer may be spent at a rig site to learn the fundamentals of operations. Here you provide technical support to the rig site team in addition to developing your knowledge of drilling, completions, and interventions operations in bp’s GWO. 

Typically, your second year will be office-based, conducting detailed planning and design work with regular field trips. As a base for all of this, you must have a strong academic record in an engineering subject. This must be matched by your willingness to learn and to undertake shift work onshore or offshore in interesting and challenging environments. 

As part of this role you are required to work in a diverse, multi-disciplined team that involves geologists, reservoir engineers, drilling engineers, completions engineers, equipment service company representatives, and production operations teams to ensure that the well plan and proposed equipment satisfies all company objectives. 

As you continue to develop in this technical role, you will be guided by the structured path, or roadmap, which is part of early to mid-career development for interventions engineers. This roadmap outlines on-the-job experiences, resources, and formal training to help you develop and rapidly build professional depth in order to reach the technical standards required for senior interventions engineer status. 

As an interventions engineer, you could:

• Develop well intervention programmes and provide technical engineering support during execution of the well programme.
• Prepare cost and time estimates for interventions operations.
• Evaluate and select appropriate interventions options by using detailed risk/benefit and cost/benefit analysis. Use various methods of analysis and software such as friction modelling, tubing design and stress modelling, torque and drag modelling, to ensure programmes are executed successfully.
• Work closely with drilling, completions, petroleum, and reservoir engineers in addition to purchasing and contracting.
• Provide daily engineering oversight to ensure operations are conducted safely and as planned.
• Participate in all safety & environment related activities within the team.
  

As a marine engineer, you will deal with the design, construction, installation, operation and repair of propulsion, auxiliary and ancillary systems and equipment within a ship. From the start you’ll be part of our IMAResT accredited Endeavour Programme — our graduate development scheme that begins at our flagship site at Sunbury-on-Thames (UK). Here you’ll find out all about our business and begin your work within the engineering team. 

Within the first year, you’ll likely also have opportunity to undertake a placement, normally in Europe. As you become more experienced you could have the opportunity to travel further afield — some of our current graduates are working in Singapore, Dubai and Korea, providing support to operational dockings, offshore support vessels (OSV), floating production, storage and offloading vessels (FPSO) and tanker new-build projects. 

Development opportunities 

The Endeavour Programme for shipping is typically a four-year or a two-plus-two year programme, with placements of varying length. Examples of current placements include the:

• Engineering teams
• Projects technical team (Sunbury-on-Thames, UK-based and part-based in Korea for new builds)
• Fleet support Team (UK and Singapore-based)
• Class society
• Sea time placement (up to two months, ship dependent)
• North Sea (Aberdeen-based)

Initially, during the first two years, your placements will be planned for you. However as you gain experience in the business, you’ll be expected to begin managing your own career path. That’s not to say you’ll be left to your own devices. We’re committed to your development and success, so you’ll be monitored and encouraged every step of the way by your mentor and line manager. 

Your future 

Once you reach the end of the programme there are a number of options for further development and broadening of your skills. Some graduates go on to pursue leadership roles, some choose technical specialisms and some change to other disciplines. Most recently, graduates have gone into roles in the following teams:

• Fleet support team
• Projects technical team
• North Sea support to FPSO project

Whichever route you pursue, we can offer you a thoroughly rewarding career that’s a mix of what you’re good at, what you like to do, and what our business needs. 

Locations

Sunbury-on-Thames, Aberdeen, Singapore, Korea. We require that all graduates be flexible as to geographical location (within the UK) for the duration of the programme.

Overview

Corrosion remains a major challenge for all industries including oil and gas. All of bp’s oil and gas production passes through steel equipment as it travels from the underground reservoir to our customers. Our materials and corrosion engineers monitor and maintain the equipment to ensure we transport our oil and gas safely to production facilities. This, of course, has a major impact on the safety of our people, the environment and our profitability.

We are committed to leading the industry in this field. The materials and corrosion community is diverse, multi-disciplined, highly technical and vibrant. We operate in all of bp’s production and refining locations around the world, the work is challenging, extremely rewarding and highly specialized. Join us and not only will you receive outstanding training and development opportunities, but you will also be working at the forefront of applied materials and corrosion engineering for the oil and gas industry.

Your role and responsibilities

You’ll do real work from day one, resolve current issues and continually mastering the latest technologies throughout your programme.

As a graduate in materials and corrosion engineering, you will receive focused training, you’ll be given challenging projects to work on which represent current problems facing our industry.

These could be in:

• Central engineering
• Technology development
• A specific business unit

You will also be assigned a senior mentor to help guide you through the first few years of your career.

Overview

Mechanical engineering is vital to bp. It ensures safe and reliable plant operation, over the life of an asset in a cost-effective manner. This involves preventing hydrocarbon releases, maximizing equipment uptime and ensuring quality projects are delivered to schedule and budget.

Mechanical engineers support our operations and projects around the world. Some work in project teams with major contractors, ensuring the correct selection, specification and construction of mechanical equipment and systems.

Others help to build new facilities or modify existing assets, or work within operations to develop and implement maintenance programmes, monitoring equipment performance and investigating operational difficulties.

Mechanical engineers also work as technical specialists, advising operations and projects on particular aspects of mechanical engineering. Not to mention their work with a broad range of mechanical equipment, such as gas turbines, compressors, heaters, vessels and piping, as well as all aspects of its design. Working with the latest technology and some of the brightest minds in the industry, this area upholds the very highest standards of mechanical integrity.

Your role and responsibilities

From the day you start, you’ll be involved in real projects. As a mechanical engineer, you could find yourself:

• Helping to maintain existing facilities.
• Developing maintenance programmes.
• Troubleshooting operating problems.

From assuring mechanical integrity at the development phase of a project, to ensuring that the correct equipment is specified and is fit for purpose, you’ll have access to all of the different areas of engineering you want to explore. This includes mechanical design, technology development, construction projects and rotating equipment.

As for where you go once your graduate programme’s finished, that’s largely up to you. We’ll encourage you to expand your mechanical engineering skills in exciting roles in projects and operations; building a career that you can be proud of.

This programme ensures quality experience gained in a real role in operations or projects, where you’ll gain hands-on experience of facility operation and maintenance, and exposure to creating a new facility and the requirements of delivering a major project.

Overview

Our offshore structures, facilities, buildings, refineries and plants are critical to the production and delivery to market of hydrocarbons - bp’s core business. We operate across the globe - in the Caspian, the deepwater off Angola and the Gulf of Mexico, the deserts of North Africa, Trinidad & Tobago, the North Sea and many other areas.

The design, build and integrity management of fixed, floating offshore and subsea structures, is down to the skills of our offshore structural engineers. They are some of the most visionary structural engineering professionals in industry. Join them and you’ll ensure safe, reliable and cost-effective plant operation for the entire lifecycle of our offshore assets.

Your role and responsibilities

As an offshore structural engineer, you’ll be working in project teams with major contractors. In this key role, you could:

• Play a part in ensuring the correct selection, specification and construction of our structures - when we’re building new facilities or modifying existing assets.
• Work in asset teams within operations.
• Help to develop and implement maintenance programmes.
• Monitor structural performance.
• Troubleshoot operational problems.
• Design and oversee modification to operating structural facilities.

Wherever you work, you’ll find the pace of development is fast but never hurried, and the skills you learn will stand you in good stead for the rest of your career.

Our award-winning graduate development Challenge Programme is an accredited scheme that will help you to attain professional recognition. It will give you a solid foundation in your core engineering discipline, and open up a number of different career paths.

Working on your own, within teams and often having to represent bp and direct other parties doing work for us, you’ll have real responsibility and lots of support plus a great variety of projects that will test both your technical and execution skills. Through high quality experience and training, you’ll gain a thorough understanding of the larger principles of our business and future leadership needs. We’ll also assign you a personal mentor to help you decide your future career path.

On completion of the Challenge Programme, you may move into a permanent role in the same team, stay with a facility or project to complete a particular phase of work, or move to a new role. Typically graduates move into asset structural integrity roles, or project structural engineers, progressing to senior roles, specialist roles, or engineering management.

As a naval architect, you will deal with the design, construction, maintenance and operation of a ship’s hull and structures, using basic and applied research, design and development calculations during all stages of the life of the ship. You’ll also gain an in-depth knowledge of safety regulations and damage control rules to allow the approval and certification of ship designs. 

From the start you’ll be part of our RINA accredited Endeavour Programme — our shipping graduate development scheme that begins at our flagship site at Sunbury-on-Thames. Here you’ll find out all about our business and begin your work with safety, operations or the assessment and inspections teams. 

Usually, within the first year, you’ll also have opportunity to undertake a placement, normally in Europe, with a class society — giving you valuable experience in surveying and plan approval.

As you become more experienced you could have the opportunity to travel further afield — some of our current graduates are working in Singapore, Dubai and Korea, providing support to operational dockings, offshore support vessels (OSV), floating production, storage and offloading vessels (FPSO) and tanker new-build projects. 

Development opportunities 

The shipping graduate programme typically has a four-year or two-plus-two year duration, with placements of varying length. Examples of current placements include working with the:

• Assessment and inspection team (Sunbury-on-Thames, UK-based)
• Projects technical team (Sunbury-on-Thames, UK-based and part-based in Korea for new builds)
• Fleet support team (UK and Singapore-based)
• Class society
• North Sea (Aberdeen-based)

Initially, during the first two years, your placements will planned for you, but as you gain experience in the business, you’ll be expected to begin managing your own career path. That’s not to say you’ll be left to your own devices. We’re committed to your development and success, so you’ll be monitored and encouraged every step of the way by your mentor and line manager. 

Your future 

At the end of the programme, there are a number of options for further development and broadening of your skills. Some graduates go on to pursue leadership roles, some choose technical specialisms and some try other disciplines.

Most recently, graduates have gone into roles in the following teams:

• Fleet support team
• Projects technical team
• North Sea support to FPSO project

Whichever route you pursue, we can offer you a thoroughly rewarding career that’s a mix of what you’re good at, what you like to do, and what our business needs. 

Locations 

Sunbury-on-Thames (UK),Aberdeen, Singapore, Korea. We require that all graduates be flexible as to geographical location (within the UK) for the duration of the programme.

Your role and responsibilities

Petroleum engineers are a key link between planning and operations. You’ll be creating value through performance optimization and developing well intervention requirements to maintain or enhance the production of hydrocarbons throughout the life of the field. Depending on your bp location and role, you will gain broad capability, primarily through job experience.

As a reservoir engineer, you’ll focus on integrating geoscience, facilities and well engineering data to understand hydrocarbon reservoir performance and optimize the economic recovery of hydrocarbons. Depending on your bp location and role, you will gain broad capability, primarily through job experience.

Our early development Challenge programme will provide you with many opportunities and benefits, including a real job from day one and a development framework that promotes breadth and depth early in your career so that you build capability quickly to take on increasingly challenging roles.

Overview

Without pipelines and all their related facilities, bp couldn’t continue to produce or refine energy products. We operate and have developed safe and reliable pipelines across the globe; from the Caspian and the Gulf of Mexico to the deserts of North Africa, the tropical water of Trinidad & Tobago, and the North Sea. The design, construction and maintenance of our pipelines are largely down to the skills of our pipeline engineers.

Your role and responsibilities

Pipeline Engineers work on technology development, project implementation and operations. Join us and you’ll be part of our graduate development Challenge Programme — which will open up a number of different potential career paths, including international opportunities. We now have established graduate programmes in North Sea, Azerbaijan, Gulf of Mexico, Asia Pacific and Angola regions.

During your time on the Challenge Programme, you could apply your engineering skills to:

• Offshore pipelines
• Onshore pipelines
• Operations and integrity management of existing pipelines
• The design and construction of new pipelines

There are so many paths you could follow. But in every case, you’ll be working with some of the key industry leaders who will challenge you to reach your potential. The pace of development is fast-paced but never hurried. You’ll have the time you need to build up new skills - ones that will stand you in good stead for the rest of your career.

On completion, you could move into a permanent role in the same team, stay with a facility or project to complete a particular phase of work, or move to a new role. Typically, graduates go into roles as asset pipeline integrity or project pipeline engineers.

Overview

The energy industry faces a wide range of challenges — process and process safety engineers advise in the selection, development and layout of oil and gas process plant equipment. Using sophisticated software modelling tools, process engineers assist the operations staff to analyse, troubleshoot, and optimise production throughput.

In addition, they recognize and minimize safety hazards as well as being involved in – and ultimately leading – multi-disciplined HAZOP teams to achieve safe levels of process design.

Process safety engineering combines the practice of science and engineering to analyse and manage hazards in the hydrocarbon industry. It deals with the prevention and control of incidents — whether at design stage for new production plants or on established projects through continuous risk reduction improvements. The team manages the integrity of all operating systems and processes by applying good design principles, and sound engineering and operating practices.

As part of a critical and far-reaching area of bp, process and process safety engineering will help you build a solid foundation across the wider engineering discipline. You could choose a career in process design, flow assurance, product development, operations or commissioning and start-up.

Your role and responsibilities

Process and process safety engineering is bp’s single largest professional discipline. As one of our engineers, your role may involve:

• The design and optimal operation of oil and gas production facilities, oil refineries, and petrochemical plants.
• Developing new technologies, for example producing transport fuels and chemicals from unconventional resources, such as natural gas and biomass.
• Applying your knowledge of science and engineering. Within our projects division you’ll be implementing the principles of inherently safer design at the concept and design phases.
• Working with operating facilities to support their case for safety and help them understand the barriers and controls that help prevent major accidents.
• Meeting regulators’ expectations, assessing major accident hazard risks and coaching the organization on process safety issues.

It’s a programme full of variety — you may be on site talking with technicians about safety critical equipment one day, and the next, modelling consequences of fires and explosions to optimize active and passive fire protection.

You could also choose to follow a career in Flow Assurance, evaluating all aspects of thermal hydraulic, production chemistry, corrosion, and erosion, issues of importance for successful design and operation of subsea pipelines and deepwater oil.

This involves integrating thermo-hydraulic modelling of flow in pipes with detailed understanding of the physico-chemical behaviour of fluids to develop a design and operational procedures that will deliver the required flowrate of fluids in a way that is compatible with the upstream source and downstream facilities.

Overview

bp has one of the world’s largest portfolios of engineering projects. Our project teams are responsible for delivering safe, competitive, cost-effective and reliable facilities through the management and integration of design, procurement, construction, and commissioning activities, from the initial concept to handover to operations.

Your role and responsibilities

As a project manager you’ll have a challenging role and could find yourself:

• Leading diverse, multi-discipline, multi-location teams.
• Ensuring that our staff, contractors and suppliers follow established procedures and processes.

After completing an early development programme in your core engineering discipline, which establishes your technical foundation and personal effectiveness, you’ll have the chance to continue your development in project delivery roles with increasing responsibility and complexity.

Overview

bp’s Global Project Organisation (GPO) spends around $8 billion of CAPEX per year across a portfolio of around 40 large-scale engineering projects. Being able to predictably execute and continuously improve performance is essential to having a sustainable, reliable, best in class projects organisation. Project services teams provide the information that underpins this. 

Our teams perform a wide range of activities, including estimating, planning, cost control and information management, across all stages of the project lifecycle to enable bp to create and deliver cost-effective, competitive projects.

Your role and responsibilities 

Project control is essential to the successful delivery of the full project lifecycle. You will gain hands-on experience of, and exposure to, our projects, processes, and tools. Typically, from a cost and schedule perspective, you will be overseeing where the project is headed, providing accurate forecast information, helping to optimise the project value, and identifying deviations from expected performance. 

As a graduate recruited into project services you will:

• Learn and apply the tools, techniques, benchmarks and measurements used to plan major projects, estimate and manage cost, forecast progress and manage change.
• Participate in the development of the project services and controls strategy, plans and procedures, reflecting both bp and contractor roles and responsibilities.
• Collate, analyze and report project data and information that leaders and stakeholders rely on to control the performance of the project, and present your work and conclusions to senior project and discipline managers.

As your experience and capability develops your career should give you the opportunity to:

• Lead multi-discipline teams of bp and agency/contractor personnel.
• Provide key inputs and understanding to help to maximise the project value and inform the decision-making processes.
• Manage the development of the project controls organization for all phases of the project.
• Set project controls standards, procedures and practices and embed these within the discipline.
• Coordinate the development of estimates and schedules within each project stage, and ensure appropriate internal and external benchmarking is completed.
• Lead the project through the various stage gates and sanction deliverables ensuring that the required information is accurate, and ready to support the investment decisions.
  

Overview

At bp, subsea systems engineering is a focus area, as we move into deeper and more remote environments. Our current portfolio includes operations in the North Sea (UK and Norway), Gulf of Mexico, Caspian Sea, Angola, and Trinidad & Tobago. In some of these locations water depths well exceed 2000m. Breakthrough technologies are needed to make these new, and existing, discoveries reliable and economically viable, and to increase productivity. The challenges are complex — and vital to our business. We have over 200 discipline engineers working in this sector. Join our diverse team and you’ll work on some of the most technically challenging projects and enjoy far-reaching career opportunities in specialisms, such as subsea systems, control, risers, floating systems or metocean.

Your role and responsibilities

As a graduate joining the subsea sector, you’ll be part of our graduate development Challenge Programme. Exposed to some of the most exciting operating, construction and technology challenges in the oil and gas industry, you’ll support our operations and project teams. From day one, you’ll work on real projects and face real business challenges and because of the nature of offshore and subsea engineering, international opportunities may arise. This means a willingness to travel and experience new opportunities is essential.

You’ll cover a lot during your training period, including:

• Project management
• Hardware technology
• Subsea interfaces

All the while, you’ll be based at major operating locations, construction yards or design offices, dealing with current issues and playing a key role in everything from field development studies to integrity studies and offshore operations. Throughout the programme, this hands-on experience is supported by formal learning and coaching.

Your graduate programme will give you a solid foundation in both your core engineering and subsea disciplines. It’s a wide-ranging area. During this time, you could have exposure to engineering areas in design, construction, installation and operations of subsea and riser system facilities. The combination of formal training, regular feedback and on-the-job practical experience led by experienced and expert engineers will prepare and inspire you for your future with us. After taking advice from your personal mentor, you’ll work together to decide the next steps on your career path. The opportunities in subsea and floating systems are such that you’ll most likely want to continue here, although you may consider becoming an engineering technical specialist, or moving into a more generalist role in projects & operations.

On completion of the programme, you’ll be prepared for roles which require a particular technical expertise - such as subsea hardware (including system architecture and component design), subsea controls, floating systems or riser systems (pipes which pass from seabed to sea surface). These roles may be in an operations environment (shore-based support or offshore), a project environment (in a design office or construction site), or in our central engineering technical centre.