Technical Apprentice Review

I deal with quality assurance issues that effect the different projects I work on. This involves talking to the different people in the manufacturing team along with engineering. I also spent some time working on my HNC and NVQ level 3 qualifiactions.

At work i have learnt a number of different skills that are very useful such as presentations, speaking to groups, the different acreditations the company work to along with the activites completed by quality assurance engineerings. With my college course i have learnt very little that can be used in my job.

When it comes to the college side of my programme, I do not enjoy alot of it. This is because none of it helps my in my job, this is due to the lack of detail included. With my normal in work roles I enjoy everything about it, mainly due to the fact I was given the option to pick the department I went in to.

There is some structure to the appreticeship programme, but this is only the fact we have to move round every 3 months. When you are actually in the department the is no structure at all. Each department has different levels of work they will give you so this means you could be spending most of your time doing nothing. This is not productive and also makes you questions if the company is worth saying in due to the fact there is no work. It would be better if there was a set load of activities every appretice completes alongside normal project work as this would give everyone an equal overview of the department.

The first year and a half of my appreticeship I recieved a lot of support and alwasy knew who I could talk to about appretice specific issues. However, when my appretice manager went on maternity leave there was long periods of time where I would have no idea who to contact and we were alwasy the last to know about any changes to the company. This made it hard during lockdown to feel part of a team and also an active part of the company. The support has increased over the last few months but there is an issue with not being able to get hold of managers.

When working towards my HNC there is very little support from teh college. The college do not have a set amount that they need to teach for each units for some tutors will go into a lot of detal where others will just tell you to research it. The last year of my HNC has resulted in a lot of last minute teaching where the tutor starts teaching you the main part of the assignment e.g. how to use the software the day before the assignment is due. This cause a lot of stress that could be avoided. There have also been occasions where the tutor has been teaching the wrong method resulting in us having to resumbit the assignment, which his new teaching that was on a powerpoint.

I do not think my qualifiaction has helped me perform better in my role in any aspect. The qualifaction is teaching us the bare minimum, which cannot be used in our day to day role due to the complexity of work completed. I have learnt more in my day to day role compared to my qualifaction due to the lack of real life examples.

Along side my work there are a number of different STEM events that we can get involved with along wit the social commity and the charity commity that plan a number of different events for people to attend

Yes

I think overall Leonardo is a great company to work for, everyone within the IPTs and the departments are very supportive and there is the opportunity for continued learning. I would not recommend Leonardo to people who want to progress through the company quickly there is a mind set they you have to leave the company and rejoin inorder to get high up within the company.

I would go in with an open mind as your experience will always be 70% different than anyone elses. This allows you to get the full experience when moving around the departmenst and working with the different projects.