Lauren tells us more about her experiences as a Analyst Graduate
Lauren Baldam
Currently I work in the Business Development Team in Centrica’s Power Business, based in Windsor. I joined the graduate programme relatively recently, in September 2014, so this is my first graduate role.
As the Power Business Development team, our overall objective is to help develop the Power Business! Practically, this includes:
- Taking the business into new areas such as a new technology or a new business model
- Building new projects in well-established technologies
- Optimising the commercial position of our existing power asset portfolio
- Executing on deals
So far I’ve found that the work here is fast-paced and challenging which has pushed me out of my comfort zone and helped me develop a number of skills. For me, a regular day can include:
- Financial modelling to support the valuation of potential investment decisions
- Updating an existing model to be used for the economic comparison of a range of generation technologies
- Supporting the team on transaction work, e.g. by collating relevant information
- Keeping on top of the latest developments in the UK power market through research
The most interesting areas that I have worked on so far have included the sale of Barrow wind farm in December last year and modelling potential investments. As the above demonstrates, the graduate role has allowed me to gain both commercial and technical experience and I hope to build on this during the next few months of my placement.
It’s a brilliant experience being part of an innovative team that is constantly looking for new opportunities and they’ve been incredibly supportive with helping me get to grips with modelling, learning the terminology (it can be a little acronym heavy!) and consolidating my knowledge of the power market. It was a little daunting initially when I was presented with my first cost model and I’ve definitely still got a lot to learn but I’ve now started to find my way within the team.
On top of this, the team is very good at giving opportunities to develop my soft skills, for example allowing me to chair our weekly team meetings. This enables me to engage with senior stakeholders across the business as I invite appropriate speakers to our team meetings as well as improving my presentation skills.
Lauren