ICA Apprentice Review

My current role consists of shadowing a technician while he carries out his daily role. I do not have the skills or training yet to undertake any work by my self on site. Once qualified my role will consist of attending site and maintaining PLC systems and site control equipment.

I have built on my PLC maintenance and programming skills that I learnt in college. I came to the company with no experience using Rockwell PLCs, but I have learned the procedure for operating and maintaining these devices. I have also learnt new fault finding and installation skills while shadowing technicians.

The site work is varied and enjoyable, the days are rarely the same and the work can be satisfying when a hard task is complete. The college work is difficult but has to be done. The program itself with hefty monthly targets on top of our site and college work is exhausting and generalised with no focus to the work undertaken on site.

Poorly. The site work should be the base of the programme. This is however not the case as the college course is a general engineering course with no focus on the site requirements. The write-up criteria and under pinning knowledge questions are general and have no bearing on the workload of the site staff.

Site staff and management are supportive in giving time out of my daily duties to complete college and paperwork assigned by the training provider. The training provider is seen once a month and has no knowledge of the site work we do and have a loose knowledge of the criteria we need to work to. I have not heard from my apprentice manager for two months and have been given no alternate contact.

As said the training provider gives no support in regards to the work undertaken on site so cannot provide guidance in terms of training. The training provider also has a poor knowledge of the criteria so cannot provide guidance as to what work we should be doing to meet the criteria.

It doesn't. The requirements for the write-ups forces us to take time away from work and turn down training to do the work. This leads to gaps in our learning and training. The training provider cannot give us any specific training as they do not know the work we undertake on site.

No, there are events run once in a blue moon but these are rarely advertised and I do not feel comfortable joining an event unless asked to join by an individual. The apprentices hold their own events at times outside of college but this is not regular and have no relation to our work or our relationships with colleagues.

Yes

The pay is above average for an apprenticeship and Thames water have good policies for looking after apprentices. The apprenticeship is good in general even though it is poorly managed in places. I have put a relative forward for the apprenticeship in another department due to the benefits of the company.

I have no knowledge of what is required to qualify for the apprenticeship. The only advice I can give is to be honest in the interview and work together in the networking challenge during the assessment centre. Outside of that there is no particular strategy to pass the application process.