Apprentice Machinist Review

At the moment I am in my second year and I spend most of my time learning how to use a grinding machine and every 2 weeks I spend a week at college studying for my diploma. I am currently on a Malini grind machine and this involves loading the blade into a fixture and machining it on 2 operations and then making any necessary adjustments from the information the cmm gives me. After I have learnt how to use the grinding machine I will move onto other machines.

I have learnt an array of new skills. During the first year I did lots of courses on different machining methods, from manual machining on milling machines and lathes to CNC machines. We also did fitting which involved techniques such as cutting and filing metal to a specification. In the second year I have also learnt a lot about how to run grinding machines, how to interpret complex engineering drawings and how to look at CMM measurements and on top of this how a production line works.

I enjoy my programme quite a lot, most of the people that I work with are very nice and will always be willing to help me. I enjoy the subjects I do at college and whilst the exams are challenging I feel like it will prove useful. The other work I do outside of the college is also very interesting as it provides a look into what the actual engineering world is like although I feel like running the same blade/doing the same thing all day for a few months gets repetitive especially as I will be put on a grinding machine for another few months after this even though I know what I'm doing.

I feel like there is a good amount of organisation and structure within my programme although I also feel like the communication of this could be better communicated to the apprentices, for example, our exam timetable was only given to us about a week and a half prior to our exams and our mandatory NVQ knowledge questions had some sets of questions in them that we didn't need to answer as they were not applicable and we were not communicated to about this until we found it.

I receive a lot of support from my employer as I feel like there is always someone I can talk to, whether that be a friend at work, a production leader, other staff or my apprentice development leader. And whenever I have my review I always get asked how things are going and we get asked questions on safeguarding and radicalisation in order to protect everyone and to make sure everyone is okay which I think is adequate support

We receive a lot of support from the training provider working towards our qualifications as we always have a college tutor we can go and speak to about anything, even if they aren't our teacher, they can still help us. We also have a lot of support in regards to the Nvq work as we have an assessor we send the questions to and get relevant support giving us advice to help us out.

I feel that my qualification through the training provider, helps me to perform well in my role quite well due to the support I receive from everyone such as my ADL, and the teachers. It also gives me most of the necessary Information I need in order to get by as everything seems to correlate quite well with what I do day to day. For example, the health and safety course helps me understand the dangers around me and how to avoid them and the drawing course helps me understand complex engineering drawings.

I am not fully aware of all of the extra curricular activities although I have been made aware that there is a cricket team. I also frequently visit the Rolls Royce leisure centre as I use the gym there frequently. They also hold social events at the leisure centre for employees. I definitely feel like these could possibly be marketed a bit better to apprentices as I'm not sure about everything that goes on, although this could be my memory.

Yes

I would reccomend Rolls Royce to a friend as I feel as though they are very commited to the wellbeing of the apprentices and making sure they finish all the courses. And they are well known for providing a very good apprenticeship scheme that is relatively well recognised even in other engineering businesses as being very good. The quality of everything is also very good and they teach you how to do everything well also.

I would say firstly you must thoroughly look through the information booklets you get given prior to the apprenticeship interview and then look up all the different sectors and what they do and what the most innovative and important things they are doing are. You must also just prepare for all of the normal interview questions aswell. I had 3 different mini interviews and one of them was about something I had made in the past, I would reccomend having a pre made power point.