Year in Industry Student Handbook 2025-26

This report will include an outline of the organisation for which you worked, a concise description giving essential details of the work carried out and a description of the relevance of the work to the activities of the particular organisation, details of the main problems you have overcome, and the benefits obtained from the placement. 

You must outline the major project work/tasks you have undertaken. It is important that you are considerate of issues surrounding workplace confidentiality.

Content

• The report should have a clear structure and be divided into sections.
• The structure below is an example of how you may want to organise your text and the questions you should try to answer in each section. You are welcome to design your own format, however, please make sure to include the topics outlined below.

Example Report Structure

1.       Introduction

What are you going to talk about in the report?
How did you find and get the position?

2.       Company overview

What type of business did you work for?
What services do they offer?
What is the industry and how does it work?

3.       Role

What was your role?
How was your team structured?
What project(s) have you worked on? OR: What were your daily responsibilities? OR: How your role and responsibility fitted with the other team/part of the company?

4.       Feedback received

What feedback have you received during the year from your line manager/colleagues?
What were the most difficult learning objectives/goals you were given and how did you meet them?

5.       Conclusion

Feel free to end the report as you wish. Examples of points you may want to touch on are: your feedback on the year in industry programme, the biggest learning you got out of the placement, your plans for your future career, any plans on how to make the most of your final year of study.

Tips for writing a good report:

• During your year in industry, make regular entries on QMPlus about your work and feel free to use them as basis for the report;
• Keep within the word limit
• Your report should have a clear structure and include an introduction, a main body and a conclusion
• The report will be read and graded by two markers who do not know you and do not have any previous knowledge of your year in industry: make sure that everything you write in the report is explained, even when you go into details
• Check your grammar, syntax and spelling – we expect that you will have significantly improved your written communication skills during the year in industry. Therefore, reports that don’t show an excellent proficiency of the English language may lose marks.

Remember:

• A penalty will apply for late submission. Reports submitted late will be penalized by five marks for each 24 hour period or part thereof after the submission date and time, including weekends and bank holidays. An assignment submitted more than 120 hours late will be awarded a mark of zero.
• Reports that exceeds the stated word limit shows a failure to synthesise material and edit the work so as to present arguments/data concisely. This will be noted in the feedback and reflected in the grade awarded.
• All reports will be checked for plagiarism through Turnitin.