Electrical Engineer Apprentice Review

My role involves getting into the office early morning, chatting to operators and other m and e about the days jobs that need attention, discussing various precuations on those jobs such as health and safety. Carrying out these jobs, such as fault finding or planned maintaince on an asset, and raising further work if needed for contractors.

New skills include communicating with others to basically let everyone know what I will be carrying out, proving an asset is dead before working on it, using basic engineering principles to engineer a fix on an asset in order to keep its longevity. Understanding that developing hand tool skills is going to be vital for my role as an electrical engineer.

I have very much enjoyed the programme thus far, as I love learning new skills and practices, and whenever I go into work, I am learning something new everyday, whether it be adjusting parameters in panels to wiring in motors, there is always something different that I can learn about. The college aspect has also been good, as talking about my experiences with fellow apprentices and learning with others that are a similar skill level to me is very enjoyable.

The programme itself I feel has been pretty well organised, I feel thats due to the excellent coordinators of the programme mostly. I say this because organising various different meetings for these catch ups I have with assessors or with the college, and also apprenticeship team building days have been structured very well. It also helps having a good team/ manager to support myself in the programme, which luckily I have, as any sort of training days I want to go for, they have allowed me to go and complete.

I have bi-weekly catch up meetings with my manager, to discuss any issues I have in my programme and also if I need any PPE or tools for completing my role as an electrical engineer. He's very welcoming and I have had no issues since my time working for/with him.

They have catch ups with me regualrly (one to ones) and I feel I can talk to them about anything from college stuff such as exam prep, to even how my role is going at work. So I would say that support wise, they are doing everything I would expect from a training provider.

I feel its a massive influence on my role, as my training provider will provide me with the basic knowledge to go out to my role, and have a better understanding of what I can do in my role. For example, if at College, I'm learning about how transistors work and function, and which transistors suit which pieces of equipment and why, I'm going to feel more comfortable tackling this issue in my role.

Yes, there are many extra-curricular activites at my work, which include the raft race coming up in april/may time. At theres always networking events going on in my calendar that I can get involved in. Thames Water have a strong understanding of providing these opportunities to apprentices and others in their workforce, which I like.

Yes

From the 6 months that I have been here, I can say that I have throughly enjoyed them due to the connections I have already made with other workers, contractors and other stakeholders within the business. I would strongly recommend joining Thames Water due to the number of opportunities that they can provide to you, whether it be extra curricular activities or personal networking discussions, theres something for anyone to enjoy whilst working for Thames.

Be yourself and ask as many questions about the business that you want to join, as Thames Water value strong thinkers, and they will see that you are a motivated and determined person. It also fits some of their values which is to be proud and be blue and be passionate about everything that you do.