Mechanical and electrical engineer Review

My overall role is to maintain all types of equipment at my water treatment site of Walton. This involves both mechanical and electrical maintenance while also involving fault finding for both. Testing and commissioning is also part of the electrical role and we are trained to meet the 18th edition wiring regulations.

I have improved my electrical skills massively as I’ve learnt much more about single phase applications and learnt everything I know today about three phase as this is usually only used on industrial environments. Additionally, I’ve learnt how to test electrical both live and dead test and furthered my mechanical knowledge by working on a range of equipment.

I love working at Walton and as part of w mechanical and electrical maintenance team. I enjoy the daily challenges and enjoy even more when we solve a problem. The only part I didn’t enjoy was college as it was badly organised and felt like the students were working harder to do well rather than the teacher pushing the students.

The apprenticeship itself is very organised and gives you all you need to learn and improve on site due to good assessor, mentors and training. However as mention before the college side of learning was very unorganised and it was a lot harder than it had to be to do well even if you was give 100% effort.

Thames Water provides plenty of training and gives you what you need to do your job well. This involves mentoring within the team and your manager giving you tools you need to become component at your job. Thames Water was actually also more effective at solving issues with the college learning than the college itself .

For the nvq on site learning and log books the support from the assessors is really useful and teaches you how to get the most out of learning while getting ticks. However at college it was basic teaching and in many chases you had to push and ask to even be allowed to do the harder parts. The worst was having to do a whole unit including assessments without the teacher in the space of two weeks. We had to rush to get everything in on time before the deadline due to COVID stopping teaching but also the teacher taking it too slow when things were normal.

I believe my nvq and on site mentoring has massively helped at me becoming confident and competent at my role. However at college I could the units were mostly irrelevant to the job itself and ended up being more confusing when applying it to the job. An example is we learn about dc circuits loads but not once was three phase mentioned.

Yes there are options to volunteer when there is water shortages in an area where you had put water bottles to the locals. Additionally, there was meant to be a team building day out for apprentices but it got cancelled due to bad planning making it hard to get there and back.

Yes

If you enjoy engineering you get to work on a range of equipment while becoming a knowledgable and competent engineer. I personally really enjoy working with my team and feel my manager is very good at meeting out overall goal while still making it enjoyable and fun. Additionally, I don’t think it’s a stressful job and have pride for my site and the work we do.

The tips I would give to someone applying to Thames Water is to make sure you have a passion for engineering as if not you won’t find learning interesting and a drag. Additionally, I would try do a qualification in something similar before hand as it helps with building understanding rather than it all being new.