Dawid Koleczko reflects on his digital internship with Bristol Health Partners and Bristol City Council

Dawid is a computer science student at the University of West of England and has worked on a digital project at Bristol City Council over the past three months.

I’ve always had a big interest in web development and supporting the local community. When an opportunity came up to undertake a student internship with the local Council and Health Partnership, I knew that this was a great chance to show others what I can do – and do something good for Bristol.

My placement focused on implementing a web version of a statistical tool showing information about the different areas, or wards, of Bristol, which were previously only available in Excel.

Working with Bristol Health Partners and Bristol City Council has given me a great introduction into the world of statistics. I learned a lot about how this data is collected and how it can be used. I also learned about different methods of aggregating this data by using a T-test, standard deviation and confidence intervals. As well as learning about statistics, I learned how to use NodeJS with Express to make a website from scratch, design the back-end, create routing and put it on the server. I really enjoyed the opportunity to use D3 to create visuals for my data and make it look professional and easier to read.

As a second-year computer science student, I have learnt many concepts and theory but the internship provided me with an opportunity to put my knowledge into practise and gain new skills.

I worked closely with the Council’s Strategic Intelligence & Performance team during my internship. It was great because they were so supportive and gave me guidance on how to work with statistical information and how it should be presented. It was great to apply my academic knowledge from projects that I have done before and see how I can implement them in a real-life situation. I have also enjoyed supporting the training of the team to make sure they’re able to maintain the website once my internship finishes.

Working with Bristol Health Partners and Bristol City Council has given me opportunities I don’t believe I would have gotten from other internships. Collaborating with the Intelligence team to create a tool which will be used by Councillors and the public has been really rewarding. This was a unique opportunity and I am sure that it will be valuable experience and knowledge I can draw on in the future.

I would like to thank the Bristol City Council and Bristol Health Partners teams for giving me the opportunity to do the internship. A special thank you goes out to John Kellas and John Baker, who were always there to support me and my work. Working with the Strategic Intelligence and Performance team has been a great pleasure.

I am also grateful for the chance to prove my skills outside of university and show that I can take on difficult challenges and succeed. Finally, having the opportunity to work with people from different organisations has been brilliant. It has provided some great insights into how organisations work and taught me more about understanding the requirements of a client. It was also useful to have some time in the internship dedicated to learning new skills. This was definitely helpful as I ended up creating a website with 1000+ webpages!

I will miss working on this project and being part of a brilliant team. I hope that I can work with them soon either on this project or something new. This internship has given me a lot of new ideas to think about in terms of job opportunities in the computing sector.

I look forward to seeing what the future holds after my degree. I am confident this experience will help me take on new projects and improve my confidence in applying for future positions, whether that be in web development or other relevant positions.

The online version of the Ward Profiles is a Beta prototype web-page available here: www.bristol.gov.uk/wardprofiles

It was primarily built by a student placement (Dawid Koleczko) joint-funded by Bristol Health Partners and Bristol City Council.

Project management support was provided by John Kellas (from ‘This Equals’) and technical web-development by Tyeth Gundry (from ‘Gundry Consultancy’).