Mechanical Maintenance Review

Have my own set of preventative maintenance tasks to complete each day and from there on out i'm more often than not left to my own initiative. Both in terms of finding experienced persons to work alongside or to utilise the system to find jobs i can handle by myself. Each Tuesday i spend the day at college

I spent the first year of the apprenticeship solely at college five days a week, this provided me with a basic btec level 3 qualification. This year, 2nd year, i spend one day per week at college studying differing subjects to the previous year. On site i've been involved with a wide range of jobs, some of which are mundane and unskilled (though some in particular were good for initially learning my way around the site) others are more skilled and as such i've used a variety of tools with their own skill sets completely differently to how i've used them in the past

On the whole i enjoy it more often than not. Working with different people frequently means i may be doing jobs which although i'd ordinarily find interesting don't appeal so much on some occasions. Some jobs are quite simply miserable, particularly in poor weather but i take these as part and parcel of a job which incorporates a wide range of tasks

Since starting the apprenticeship we've had 3 separate apprentice organisers come and go, this has meant that although on the outset everything seems to have been smooth the work behind the scenes hasn't necessarily been so. The college itself too isn't without its faults but most issues have been passed onto the appropriate persons and dealt with. On site all seems more loose and could do with improvement, though that's not to say the current system fails entirely

Thankfully i've not found myself within a position whereby i've needed to seek much help and support particularly. However, on the odd occasion i've needed to ask for some help i've found i have all the necessary contacts in order to resolve said issues. This mostly concerns 1st year at college but on site i can easily pop across a single corridor and ask 1 of 3 managers for help

Throughout these 2 years thus far we've have meetings with the college apprentice organiser, it's through her we give feedback on how we're doing and what it is we want to improve. However she herself doesn't provide any support and any support i received tended to be from the teachers, albeit minor issues such as how to go about a particular assignment

Though i've been involved with a wide variety of jobs on site i can't say much of what i did at college seems to have come into its own as yet. CNC, mechanical systems, health and safety and hand fitting seem to be the most applicable ones thus far.

So far as i'm aware of there are but a few, including yoga and lunchtime training meetings. Neither of these peak my interest however. Information regarding these is sent out via email to, presumably, all employees on site. Within our maintenance department we tend to organise our own events as a group

Yes

Though there are parts of the job i find dull and annoying the benefits of working for the company outweigh these in several forms, for me a large part of that is work variety and not being stuck behind a desk. Additionally unlike many other apprenticeships i looked at this one offered a reasonable living wage which meant i was able to move down here for the position (from Cambridgeshire)

The advice i would give would largely be that, within maintenance, be prepared to start from scratch and prove yourself as an engineer and as a person regardless of what you believe yourself to be or what experience you had before you started. It also wouldn't go amiss to either get yourself or keep yourself fit in preparation as much of the job is on your feet for large stretches of time each day