Summer Internship Experience at Keppel Shipyard Limited

Summary

This report is prepared on the basis of my 5 months internship in Keppel Shipyard Limited as IT Service Management on GEMS application. During my summer internship experience, I am quite fortunate and glad as I am able to apply my module knowledge in MySQL database I’ve learned during my studies in Republic Polytechnic in real-life work experience in KFELS company. There are two main tasks that were given to me during my internship which assist in day-to-day operational support for GEMS and assist in Bi-annual User Access Review Exercise which is conducted twice a year. With the responsibilities given to me, I’ve learned how the process in the company is run. Working in the office environment is a new aura for me where there will be a time the office will be quiet and there will be a time where the office will be a busy and noisy especially when my other colleagues are discussing their projects. The internship helped me to acquire knowledge in depth on professional communication, time management and team building.

Introduction

The company I was sent for an internship was Keppel Shipyard Limited (Keppel FELS) and was assigned to the Group Information System department. However, with the advanced modern technologies, they use IT infrastructure to design offshore rigs for their projects. There are different kinds of software application systems used for designing the rigs such as ABS 02E system and Global Engineering Management System which can be called GEMS. With these online software systems, the company is able to keep business operations connected, keep track of their progress of projects, easily accessible from home or another country, and enables effective management of engineering-related activities. My internship job scope is IT Service Management on GEMS where I need to work together with engineering users. It is a day-to-day operation of IT Application Support desk function. My responsibilities are to perform 1st level and simple 2nd level application support and assist in User Access Review which is an important period as it is part of IT Audit Requirement. 

Background Information on Organization

Keppel Offshore & Marine company contain different kinds of yard such as from the offshore division - Keppel FloaTEC, Bintan Offshore, Keppel FELS, from the marine division - Keppel Shipyard, Keppel Philippines Marine, from specialized shipbuilding division - Keppel Singmarine, Keppel Nantong Shipyard and many more. Different yards have their own mission and responsibilities to handle. For the offshore division, they are expertise in designing, repairing, fabricating of offshore structures, building high-performance mobile offshore rigs mainly focusing on starting to build the ships from the scratch. Whereas marine division, they are expertise in repairing, jubilation, upgrading all types of machine vessels which mainly focusing on completing the ships. Keppel Shipyard Limited (Keppel FELS). This company design, construction, upgrading major systems and repair advanced mobile offshore rigs. So, it is more to an Engineering field related. Most of the projects that the company handle are based on the client’s request. The latest award Keppel FELS won was in 2010 which are the Shell Platform Rig of the Year Award, Offshore Yard Award at the Seatrade Asia Awards and received the May Day 2010 CBF (Cheaper, Better, Faster) Model Partnership Award from the National Trades Union Congress. Keppel Shipyard remains competitive in a changing market environment thus Keppel Shipyard main goal is to offer viable, cost-effective and adaptable solutions to the customers. “Near Market, Near Customer” service is part of their strategies service. 

The Training and Work Assignments

Operation Support for GEMS

It is my main day-to-day task. In this area, I need to check whether the service requests form is properly filled and has been authorised correctly. Checking the GEMS support email every day and promptly is part of my job scope to ensure users have included Service Desk in their email. Next, I need to prepare scripts for account creation, account password reset, and project authorization according to the Engineering user’s requests. To prepare and run the scripts for the respective requests or incidents, first, they need to log the ticket by Service Desk. Other than that, I also need to provide assistance to the user for application Windows-related issues such as user experiencing a blank screen, unable to upload or download the documents due to JAVA and IE versions and if the user is experiencing slowness or unloading page due to full cache. Those users that face some technical issues that are out of our 1st and 2nd-level support capability, we will assign the incident to the backend team. For us to be more proactive, once we send the unsolved incidents to the backend team, we will also ask the caused problem and the solution for it so that in the future, we will be able to detect and solve the issues by ourselves and not totally depend on the backend team which will shorten the process of managing the incidents. The faster the request and incidents have been fulfilled or solved, the smoother the users will be able to continue their work for their project and this will make the company continue to strive for the better.

User Access Review is an important exercise which in compliance with IT Audit Requirement. The objectives of this exercise are to update all the active user's details for every application used such as GEMS, JDE, iSRP and etc and to ensure the users are granted with appropriate access rights respectively. The inactive users will be removed from the applications. Automate User Access Review is being used on sending UAR via outlook emails and reminders will be sent to the user respectively once it reached its deadline duration. So, my task for this exercise is to create the Sharepoint folders & upload the excel data in the folder respectively and grant of access for all reviewers. The automated email which contains the instruction and URL of Sharepoint folder will be sent according to the date and time set by us. Next, I need to keep track of the submission. Once the reviewers had sent back the UAR signed softcopy to us, I need to verify that proper signs off are done, otherwise, I need to inform the user to get the correct endorsement. After it has been verified, I need to update the status for submission received in Sharepoint.

Lastly, I need to save the submitted documents to the right folders for the respective application Administrator to update according to the remarks written by the reviewers. Accomplishment My accomplishment is able to prepare all the scripts that needed to be done on the same day I received the requests from the users even during the peak period. This shows that I am able to cope with my tasks effectively. At the same time, I am able to work on both tasks given to me, GEMS support and User Access Review on the same day as long as I am able to manage my time. This is valuable to the company because an employee that is able to work under pressure in completing different kind of tasks given before the deadline will keep the company on track and continue to progress smoothly without any delay. This is valuable to me as an individual because I am able to find out my capability in time management and am still able to produce quality work even if there are a lot of requests that need to be done. My other accomplishment is my verbal and written communication skills which have improved a lot. During my internship, I started to feel comfortable interacting with the users in a professional way in any circumstance. This is valuable to the company as there is a need for us to work together with different kinds of users or staff. So, having proper and clear communication skill, it will reduce misunderstanding which means lesser errors produce in the work. This is valuable to me as an individual as it will make my work more efficient at work. With proper communication skills, I am able to express my points clearly and effectively especially when I need to work together with my other colleagues.

Reflections on My Summer Internship

While I had my internship for the past 5 months, everything runs smoothly and there are no many issues that I’ve faced. But there is a challenge that I need to face which is dealing with the users appropriately. I need to know how to approach and respond using appropriate tone or medium to interact with different users of different backgrounds professionally even if the user’s response may sound offensive or in an informal way or users that are impatient to get their issues or request to be done straight away. When I need to complete a lot of scripts in a day, I’ve always been reminded by my supervisor that we need to focus and prioritize more on the important or emergency requests first such as failed password login. If we didn’t reset the user password as soon as possible, the user will not be able to do their important tasks in the applications such as approval of documents, promoting the status of projects and etc. Compare at the beginning, I am scared to reply to the user’s email as I may mistakenly put the wrong information.

So, for the first week of my internship, I will only read the emails and let my supervisor to reply them instead. As I read all the previous emails on how GEMS Support reply to the user, I started to reply to the user’s inquiry but only after my supervisor had checked my written email. After a few weeks, I started to be more independent and feel confident to reply to the user’s email without going through my supervisor. After months of handling the user’s requests or issues, users started to directly email me or Lync me instead of sending their email to GEMS Support which shows that they have gained my trust and are able to rely on me which I felt a big accomplishment too. There is a colleague that I look up to during my internship. He is very kind and always helps me when I’m in need. He is able to work effectively and able to cope with the jobs given to him. He also needs to do part-time jobs for GEMS support even though it is not part of his main job scope. He will always show his excitement in helping me out such as helping me to connect my laptop to the wireless printer, explaining and giving me some sample scripts for me to refer to, and always asking me if I have any questions related to the scripts. This internship gives me the opportunity to gain exposure and adapt to new skills. Preparing scripts is a new skill for me. I have not learnt about making scripts related to SQL query before. However, with the guidance and clear explanation received from my supervisor and my colleague, I am able to grasp new things readily and apply to work. Even though it is a new skill for me, my supervisor is very happy with the quality works I’ve produced which is excellent, well organized and accurate.

Conclusion

Summarize your overall learning and achievements. This internship allows me to harness and enriched different kinds of skill, knowledge and theoretical practice that I’ve learned and equipped myself in the Republic Polytechnic. Things that I’ve been taught during my studies in polytechnic had enabling me to transform theory into practical real-life situations. This internship allows me to find my own strengths and weaknesses that I may not be aware of it. One strength that I started to see in myself is that I am very enthusiastic when interacting with people which is why I’ve been chosen to work as Service Management and I’ve also shown a lot of initiative attitude and proactive towards work such as reminding my supervisor of urgent requests that she need to attain. My weakness that I found out is that sometimes I need to be more alert in checking the support emails. If I can redo even before the start of my internship, I will surely go to improve my technical skills so that my problem-solving skills will be improved further which is what every company wants from its employee. I also learn the culture of the IT industry and adapt to a new lifestyle such as the working hours that start early in the morning from 7.30 am till 5.30 pm.

With the experience I’ve gained during my internship, I know that I started to develop my interest in Service Management which I enjoyed the most as I am able to interact with different kinds of people, and making scripts is also what I enjoyed the most during my internship. The area that I need to improve on for my future jobs, is that I need to share my opinions openly for the benefit of the company. In conclusion, I did enjoy my internship and was satisfied with the job scope given to me. I am grateful to be able to experience first-hand exposure to working in a real-world that is related to my IT course and now I have a wide view of IT industry. I am willing to learn new skills if I am given an opportunity for my future employment. My advice for my juniors is to be open-minded and well prepared in receiving any tasks given to them even if it is not related to their course field. Take this opportunity to find and experience new skills for their future usage or future employment. The internship is definitely a starting milestone in the actual work field and as a big breakthrough in their career development.

References

1. 10 Years of Excellence (2002 - 2012). (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.keppelom.com/en/content.aspx?sid=3487
2. 10 Years of Excellence (2002 - 2012). (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.keppelom.com/en/content.aspx?sid=3487 http://www.keppelom.com/en/content.aspx?sid=2658 A