One reading from a real meter tells a marker more than three pages of “I assisted in electrical work”. A voltage, an insulation resistance value, a load current on a feeder, anything an instrument actually showed you.
Markers know this. A report that never gives a single figure reads like somebody who stood at the door of the substation. A report with readings reads like somebody who held the tester.
Maybe you’re thinking your placement wasn’t that kind of place. They had you carrying cable drums at the distribution company, or running errands on site while the electrician did the real work. Stay with me. Even that placement holds a SIWES report for electrical engineering, and this guide shows you where to find it.
The format, and whose format wins
Preliminary pages, then four or five chapters with the experience chapter carrying most of your marks, then references and appendices. The full skeleton is in our SIWES report format guide, so this post takes that structure as given and deals with the electrical side only. The Industrial Training Fund runs SIWES nationally, but the report itself belongs to your school, and your department’s format sheet beats this post and every PDF you’ll find online.
Where electrical engineering students actually get placed
- Electricity distribution companies, in the injection substations, the metering unit or the customer service office
- Transmission substations and power stations
- The electrical maintenance unit of a factory, bottling plant or cement works
- Building electrical contractors, doing wiring on houses and offices under construction
- Solar and inverter installers
- Telecom base station maintenance firms
- The works department of your own university
Chapter Two is where reports first fall down, because students name the company and stop there. “I was attached to a distribution company in Ibadan” tells the marker almost nothing. “I was attached to the maintenance crew of an injection substation that steps 33kV down to 11kV and serves four feeders” has already started the chapter properly. Name the unit, say what it does, give the voltage levels and the equipment.
Match every task to a course you’ve taken
This is the whole job, and most reports never do it.
- Write down every task you did during the placement, however small.
- Beside each one, write the course it belongs to.
- Group the tasks into three or four areas of work.
- Write each area once in Chapter Three, with the course link stated plainly.
So house wiring, conduit runs and terminating sockets belong to electrical installation. Transformer checks belong to electrical machines. A feeder that tripped and the hunt for the fault belong to power systems and protection. Installing and testing prepaid meters is measurement and instrumentation. Inverter and solar work is power electronics, and motor starters or a PLC panel in a factory belong to control. Even the permit-to-work form you signed every morning is your safety course, met in the one place anybody actually enforces it. You’re not inflating anything when you do this. You’re describing what you did in the language of the course you’re studying, which is what a SIWES report for electrical engineering exists to test.
What students write, and what to write instead
What students write: “I assisted in the maintenance of transformers.”
Do this instead: “I joined the monthly check on the 33/11kV transformer at the injection substation, recording oil level and winding temperature, and I noticed the breather silica gel had turned pink, so it was replaced that day.”
What students write: “I learned house wiring.”
Do this instead: “I wired a three-bedroom flat from conduit to final connection, then watched the supervisor carry out the insulation resistance test before the supply was connected. The readings are in Appendix B.”
What students write: “I was mostly carrying materials.”
Do this instead: “I handled materials and stores on site, which meant reading cable sizes off the sheath, matching breakers to circuits on the drawing, and keeping the stores record the supervisor used to reorder.”
Same tasks in each pair. One version earns marks. And don’t copy the logbook into the report week by week so it reads like a diary. If the logbook itself is your problem, our guide on how to fill a SIWES logbook shows what to write every day, the slow days included.
Readings, diagrams and one fault followed to the end
Readings first. Give the figures you actually recorded, and label an estimate as an estimate. Never invent a reading to make a page look stronger, because a marker who has worked in a substation will see a wrong number from across the room.
Then diagrams, because a SIWES report for electrical engineering with an empty appendix is a weak one. Put these in, each referred to from Chapter Three:
- A single-line diagram of the substation or the plant supply
- A wiring diagram of a circuit you actually worked on
- A sketch of a distribution board or panel layout
Then one fault followed from the report coming in to the supply being restored. A feeder trips, the crew patrols the line, finds a broken insulator, isolates and earths the section, replaces it and recloses. Write that sequence as a numbered procedure. One fault written well stays with a marker longer than two pages of scattered activity.
Recommendations only you could have written
“The company should improve safety” earns nothing, because anybody can write it without entering the gate. “Two of the three earthing sticks at the substation had damaged clamps, so crews waited for each other between jobs, and replacing them would end that wait” earns marks, because it proves you watched and thought about it. If you want a standard to point at, the Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency publishes the installation and safety regulations, and it certifies the electrical contractors you may have worked under.
A sample chapter opening
“My industrial attachment was undertaken with the maintenance unit of an injection substation that steps 33kV down to 11kV and supplies four feeders. I worked in turn with the line maintenance crew, the metering team and the substation operators, and this chapter describes the work carried out in each area and the skills I gained…”
That opening names the unit, gives its size and voltage levels, and tells the reader how the chapter is organised. Notice it never claims the student operated the switchgear alone. A marker spots borrowed authority in one second.
Before you submit
- Every task tied to a course
- Real readings, with estimates labelled
- At least one diagram in the appendix
- One fault written as a procedure
- One recommendation from your own eyes
- Pages, numbering and references checked against your department’s sheet
If your placement was mostly in a factory workshop, the mechanical engineering guide covers that ground, and if it was on a building site, the building construction guide will help with the site chapters. And if the logbook is full but the SIWES report for electrical engineering still won’t come together, send us a message. Tell us where you served and what the department asked for, and we’ll tell you which parts of the placement to build the report around. Wetin the meter show you, na im you go write.
Where to go from here
Free. Start with our free tools for students.
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