Technician Engineer Review

Working within estimating. Take offs of construction drawings, looking at schedules and transferring from the schedules to the new software which they use in the estimating department of my company. I use highlighters and pens for my take offs and I also use excel. The excel side of it can be interesting if you use the right formulas at the right time to make your job automated and a lot easier and quicker and simpler.

I have learnt how to do take offs and how to read a construction drawing properly. I also learned how to fold a construction drawing properly and how to organise them. I have developed my excel skills and also my people skills as I had to sit in a lot of meetings with other people from different companies and different projects. I have learned how to use Estimating XG which is the software they use.

I enjoy my programme a lot, the company is very good at keeping you 'in the loop', even when on furlough during the coronavirus pandemic. The people I work with are (mostly) all nice and helpful as a lot of them were apprentices before so they know what it is like. This means that they know what bits you can really benefit from and what parts of the job you maybe won't benefit as much from.

The cadet programme is fairly well structured with 2 modules a year with the rest of my cohort. The university side of it happens on a Thursday and everyone that I have worked with knows that I go to uni and they allocate time for it and are very understanding. The 20% off the job is very hard to do when you're outside of uni however that is the government and not necessarily the firm.

I receive a lot of support from my employer. On the work side of things, Laing O Rourke are very supportive with stress and mental health as that is a big issue in construction. With uni, there still is some disconnect between work and uni however I know they are trying to rectify this, and I am certain it is being let down from the uni side, not from my employer's side of action.

I receive a fair amount of support from my training provider however most of that support comes from online documents. I find the lecturers very difficult to understand and the facilities in LSBU aren't the best to learn in. I have to read around the topics a lot and most of my learning doesn't come from lectures or uni, and instead from youtube and people within my place of work that want to help me.

At the moment not a lot, in my job I do what I have learned through the job. The theory side that I learn at uni is not transferable to my job just yet. This could be because I'm just in my first year or because my job is practical whereas my uni is theoretical. Hopefully in the years to come there will be some sort of link between the two sides of my apprenticeship.

There aren't really organised extra curricular activities and instead if you want to go and do something with your team you have to organise it yourself. There are things like site visits, except I haven't done one yet. There is also a football team as far as I am aware, however that is only from word of mouth, I haven't actually seen the CHt or Laing O Rourke Football team in person.

Yes

For me, the two options were the armed forces or an apprenticeship, because the uni life never appealed to me. I joined LOR because it is associated with my school and therefore have known about it for quite some time. It also has a really praised cadet scheme that means that I get a qualification without the debt tied to it. These are the reasons I would (and have) recommend Laing O Rourke to a friend.

I would say that the best thing you can do is find somebody inside the company that you can use as a name drop. Ideally the best way to do this is on one of their work experience placements for the summer as these are a very good way of getting your foot in the door and seeing what the working world is like whilst still being at school. You can apply online at their website.