Internship at Gea Happel in the Netherlands 2003

Johannes Platzl (5)

At the end of the first term 2002/2003 I had the opportunity to do a one month internship at Gea Happel. Gea Happel is a well known European air-condition company. The plant in the Netherlands employs approximately 45 workers who do planning-, assembly-, trouble-shooting- and service jobs.

My main occupation was assembling some big air handling systems and doing some service jobs.

After a short flight I arrived in Schiphol/Amsterdam at about 10:30 am from where I continued my journey to Rotterdam by train. I arrived in Rotterdam at 12:00 am. Rotterdam accretes with some smaller cities and has approximately 1,4 mio. inhabitants.

One of my future workmates at Gea picked me up at the train station in Rotterdam and showed me my accommodation - a dormitory of the Erasmus University. This dormitory accomodates students from all over the world. My first roommate came from Azerbaijan. He left after some days and my next roommate was from Turkey.

On the first day I was given a short introduction and in the following weeks I was sent to many different building sites in the whole country. Al together I worked with four different collagues. In the first week I worked in Amsterdam for two days to establish an air handling and heating recovery system for “Postbank”. On Thursday we eyed up a fire damage in Appeldorn and then we travelled to a warehouse to repair a ventilation appliance.

On Friday we drove to Karkade. There we fitted a chimney to a ventilating system. This ventilating system is a redevelopement: A gas burner is integrated in the system.

My next task was to exchange a pump for an air conditioning unit in Duiveland, from where we travelled to Amersfort. There we fitted a small air-handling system in a big office building. On Furthermore we examined a failure in a new building in Breda (The ventilator was too loud). On Friday we drove to Weert doing some service jobs and a unit check.

The last two weeks we worked in Hogheschool Amsterdam. We redeveloped the whole air-handling system of the building. Where we also built some AT+ units. I spent a lot of my free time on swimming in the North Sea (The Hagne) or sightseeing (Rotterdam, Amsterdam, The Hagne,..). I went clubbing a lot sometimes until the small hours. The bargain for going out is big, however it's a little bit expensive. I really enjoyed a good on-the-spot support. All my colleagues were extremely helpful. Especially I would like to thank Mrs. Moorselaar and Mrs. Voraberger who did all the arrangements.