Robbie Aitchison
2026 Saltire Scholar
Capital Delivery Intern, Network Rail
Sports Design Engineering, University of Strathclyde
I'm Robbie, a Sports Design Engineering student at the University of Strathclyde. My course combines engineering with management, so it's a good mix of hands-on technical skills and planning/people skills. I’m also president of the Men’s Basketball Club which further builds on these planning and management skills. I applied to the Saltire Scholars Programme because I wanted to gain hands on experience in a real workplace, not just learn about it from lectures. I was hoping this summer would show me what it's actually like to be in a working environment, rather than just the theory behind it.
I interned in Network Rail's capital delivery team based in Glasgow, working on a project to electrify the railway line in Fife. My role was mostly focused on project support. Tracking paperwork and schedules, sitting in on meetings with contractors and utility companies, and helping prepare materials for communication with the Fife Council.
Early on, I attended meetings discussing the civils work need to fit the new power lines underneath bridges and tunnels, which meant first moving underground cables and pipes out of the way. This quickly introduced me to how Network Rail collaborates with it’s contractors to manage project work. From there I underwent training on safety and security, went on site visits to see the actual construction work, spent a day learning how railway signals and level crossings work, and even had a volunteering day laying track sleepers by hand at a heritage railway.
The work was closely related to my degree and extracurricular interests. A lot of the scheduling and planning overlapped with what I'd studied at university and have had to do for the basketball club, but it also pushed me somewhere new. I was particularly interested by the amount of work done to deal with people in the community. From reassuring worried neighbours, communicating with businesses affected by road closures, to explaining to a resident why their street was about to get much noisier. University can often paint a very black and white picture of the workplace so it was great to see how work can go beyond the people in the office and on site.
Over the summer I contributed to several pieces of work. I reviewed planning documents for two of the project sites, working closely with the Project Management team to make sure everything was accurate before it went for approval. I built and kept up spreadsheets to track project progress, put together a table and timeline of road closures for the local council, and wrote a weekly progress report for the team. Small things individually, but each one a valuable insight into the workings of large-scale projects.
The most memorable part of the internship was getting to go to North Queensferry and head up to the top of the Forth Rail Bridge. Although it wasn’t entirely blue skies, we narrowly escaped the rain and got a chance to see the fantastic view from one of Scotland's most famous landmarks.
The experience has allowed me to understand the direction I’d like my career to go in post university, before it I would struggle to look past graduation but now I have an idea of how I could work towards a degree in Project Management and / or infrastructure.
The experience also helped me boost my confidence, at the beginning, I found myself quiet and nervous to contribute to meetings and conversations but by the end I felt able to chip in and ask questions. This was definitely helped by the fantastic work culture at Network Rail and especially in Capital Delivery. Every single person in the team was keen to help and answer any queries I may have, making sure that I knew there was no such thing as a silly question.
My advice to future scholars would be to say yes to everything you're offered, even the things that don't look like your main project. My most useful learning came from the volunteering day, the site visits and a community drop in event, some of which weren’t technically 'my job'. Ask questions in meetings even if you think they're basic - everyone I worked with was generous with their time when I did.
Being a Saltire Scholar has given me a testing ground for everything I'd learned at university, and I’ve come out the other side with a much clearer, more confident picture of the kind of engineer and project manager I want to become.
