Therese (23) works among decommissioned oil rigs

AF Miljøbase Vats in Rogaland receives offshore installations and other marine structures for dismantling and recycling. This is where Therese Blickfeldt (23) is spending her summer.

– I’m having a great time! It’s so much fun, and I look forward to going to work every day. The days go by very quickly, and there are so many nice people here, she says.

Normally, she studies to become a mechanical engineer at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. At Vats, she works both in the office and out on the base.

– I do calculations and go out to see things in practice. I work with professionals who operate machines and cranes, and I do a variety of tasks.

Therese says she has been warmly welcomed.

– I felt like I became part of the team in the first week! I’m very curious and maybe a bit annoying, but everyone is super nice and answers right away when I ask something. I’m really enjoying myself, says Therese.

Malene Ananda Holmen will be working with AF Energi throughout the next academic year.

She is studying energy and environment at NTNU and will be writing a project assignment and likely a master’s thesis based on AF Energi.

– I will be writing about energy wells and analyzing how to extract the maximum amount of energy from them. I will use operational data from energy wells managed by AF Energi, assess the factors affecting the installations, and see how the design of well parks can be standardized. The goal is to design well parks more efficiently in the future, explains Malene.

She is using her summer job to read up on the topic and understand how AF Energi works with energy wells. She works both from the main office at Helsfyr and out in the field.

– The other summer students and I spent a week at the Life Sciences Building. We got to experience the construction site at the same time. It was really cool to see a large project in real life, says the 24-year-old.

Last summer, Aleksander Holth (24) worked on building a highway in Sweden. It went so well that he was offered the same job this year.

– It was a great match! I was asked if I wanted to come back, and I gladly accepted, says Aleksander.

He is studying to become a civil engineer in transport infrastructure at OsloMet. This summer, he is working for AF Anlegg on the E4 Förbifart Stockholm, a large highway project where Trafikverket is the client. AF Anlegg is building approximately seven kilometers of highway in a tunnel with two parallel lanes plus six kilometers of ramp tunnels.

Aleksander works with quality assurance and documentation of groundwork.

– I follow up on the work the skilled workers do with laying water and sewage pipes and conduits in the tunnel. They document everything they do, and I follow up and deliver the documentation to the client, ensuring that everything complies with the requirements and drawings we have been given.

– Is it a bit special to work on a large project?

– Yes, I think so. In ten years, I can drive here and say that I was a part of this. I’m looking forward to that, says Aleksander.

Andrea Hanshus (21) also has a summer job on the project. She studies mapping and surveying at Trøndelag Higher Vocational School in Støren.

– The first week, I went through leveling, I helped set heights and worked with scanning. In addition, there is a lot of office work, says Andrea.

Surveyors, or staking engineers, ensure that construction is done in the right place and at the correct height. It is critical that the measurements are accurate when tunneling and aiming to meet the tunnel being driven by another contractor in the opposite direction.

Andrea works a 12-16 shift. This means she works for 12 days and then has 16 days off.

– I actually like everything about this. The job is interesting, and I like the working hours, being at work when on-site and then having time off when at home. It’s very pleasant here, and there is a good camaraderie when people work so closely together. I have been very well received here, she says.

Mathias Valhovd, Tinus Garshol, and Lars Vatten have summer jobs at Innovasjon & Digital. They are exploring how artificial intelligence can be used in the tool Endringer.no.

– We have visited projects and talked to many people involved in projects to understand how the change management process works and the workflow between the client and the contractor. We have now found a use case that we are working on, explains Mathias (22).

Endringer.no is a web application developed by Innovasjon & Digital. The solution maintains all history related to changes in a project. The summer interns use predefined AI models to automate searches in contract documents based on incoming changes.

– This seems to have great value if we can get it to work, both in terms of money saved through more efficient change management and avoiding legal costs later, says Mathias.

He studies computer technology at NTNU, while Lars and Tinus study physics and mathematics at NTNU. They see the summer job at AF Gruppen as a valuable experience.

– We have studied AI and machine learning subjects, but we haven’t gone as in-depth with AI as we are doing now, so it’s new. It could also become very relevant, says Tinus (24).