Service delivery engineer Review

I am responsible for the installation, repair, and maintenance of the copper network within the UK. I carry out 3-6 jobs a day within my preferred working area, communicate my intent and an ETA with my customers and completed my work to a quality standard, as I was trained to.

I have learnt the underground skill, SOGEA skill, Broadband Skill and fibre to the cabinet repair skill. These skills help me to get our customers in service without the need to pass the job back to control, to be reallocated to an appropriately trained engineer. I value this extra training.

I enjoyed the apprenticeship programme as I had a knowledgeable and supportive assessor and felt I was given enough time to complete all my work without having to stress. It was particularly well managed throughout the pandemic, with online release days and round the clock support and advice.

I feel the programme was structured well but some additional aids could really help out, for instance, the programme is evidence heavy (pictures of various things) and a provided list of required evidence during induction at Yarnfield would have helped a lot as a lot of these pictures could be taken during the CALOMI buddying portion of the learner journey.

Openreach as a company isn’t very supportive when it comes to day to day issues, but line managers and patch leads can be very supportive with this, but it is a mixed bag of results in that regard. Some patch leads and managers I have worked with aren’t fully committed to the support element of their role, while others go above and beyond.

As much as is needed, my assessor was available most days, and sometimes even during other training sessions with other groups. The support offered always pointed me in the right direction and made the experience stress free. As mentioned above, a provided list of required evidence would be fantastic support for new starters.

I feel the apprenticeship focused on both the HR side of the company, basic computer and communication skills, as well as elements specific to my job role. Because I needed to learn information on the job to transfer to the programme I had to learn more than I may have originally, which was helpful.

Sadly, due to COVID-19 I haven’t had a chance to properly look into extra activities, but I do know some are offered. I am not the sort of person to engage in extra activities but I have formed some great relationships with my colleagues along the way, which has helped both in and out of work.

Yes

I have suggested the Openreach trainee programme to several friends, as I feel it’s a great way to start at a job and build a purposeful career that makes a difference to the country, especially during COVID-19. The “on the job” training and class based apprenticeship really have helped set me up and I’d like to see others achieve that

Don’t stress about learning everything all at once, I found that my first 6 months were fairly miserable as I didn’t know a huge amount about certain aspects of the job, after 6 months I felt a lot more confident in my abilities and after a year and a half I feel very comfortable carrying out my work