engineer Review

I work within the survey and alignment division of the engineering sector. This involves using items such as theodolites and laser scanners. The work we do is mainly on ships and varies from monitoring movement to alignment of on board systems. Each job varies day by day. Another responsibility for the team is to do flatness checks on various items.

Yes, I have learnt how to use many different alignment machines and tools along the way. In my first year I also managed to learn bench fitting skills and welding abilities. The skills keep developing as I get more experienced in my role and take on more responsibility. The skills vary from placement to placement and I do feel that I was lucky enough to develop more technical skills because of this. This includes the likes of excel macro capabilities and contractor management.

I am lucky to be within the role I am in, it is different from most roles within the apprenticeship and has a wide range of jobs to do. As for the overall programme I have not enjoyed it as much as I had thought when I applied. It was quite unorganised and work was slow and inconsistent which you don't think to be the case when you apply.

I started my programme in 2015, back then it was extremely unorganised for many different reasons. I do however believe this is changing. I think this will take time and improve but there are still a lot of things that could be done better. Placement rotation being one of them. When I applied we were split up into different disciplines that we hadn't chosen and then many swapped at a later date. I believe this has changed now.

As a whole, there is a huge range of support provided by the business. I believe this is where they stand out. They offer many different forms of care and are very focused on looking after your health and wellbeing. This includes things such as free use of a health centre on site and hotlines to call.

This was another downfall of the apprenticeship. We had an independent training provider for our learning and this has changed company multiple times. The qualifications themselves have also changed over the years and I believe these two factors meant the business struggled to provide the support when required and we received it very late. All of my work has now been complete but was very rushed towards the end because of the lack of support throughout the first two years.

I do not feel my NVQ report has helped me from a practical point of view. Instead of doing jobs relevant to your job, you find yourself doing unnecessary tasks which waste time just to sign the work off. The only benefit was it gave me an opportunity to get experience writing reports. The BTEC was beneficial from a practical point of view because it helped me to understand the core knowledge behind the engineering we do.

There are some opportunities throughout mainly the first and second year of the apprenticeship. During my time in these years I found that almost all of the sporting events were cancelled or rescheduled because organisation was so poor. There is a large amount of networking and apprenticeship council events to get involved in. These however are often frowned upon by placement managers and can negatively affect your actual work. They are considered to be a waste of time or viewed as a slacking off exercise which is the main reason many people choose against participating.

No

From my personal experience, I would not recommend the apprenticeship I did to a friend. I do believe other sites and apprenticeships within the company are rated much higher than mine though but I cannot vouch for them. If I could go back in time I would retract my application from the apprenticeship and look elsewhere and believe many others would to. This is mainly due to poor structure and a misleading application. For this reason I would not recommend this to a friend.

Understand the role you are applying for and what it might entail. Look at other sites as there are many across the country that offer a wide range of different apprenticeships. Read reviews or speak to ex apprentices from that site to see if the job is right for you. Take advantage of company incentives and benefits.