Apprentice ICA maintenance technician Review

During the first year of my apprenticeship I am attending Make Uk college full time, and spending half term holidays at my Severn Trent base. Whilst at college, we spend a few weeks doing each unit and learn practically as well as doing classroom learning on BTEC days. Whilst at the Severn Trent site, I spend time with different workers to see what they do in their day to day.

I have learnt a lot since starting at Make Uk. I had no prior knowledge of anything related to the engineering sector, but since starting last October I now have an extensive knowledge of working with hand tools, wiring and testing electricity and how to program a PLC- all of which are important for my job.

I enjoy my programme because I like to learn new things and work practically as opposed to sitting in a classroom and listening to lectures. However, the college is very unorganised, and as someone who has never done this scope of work before, I was expected to have a prior knowledge which I did not have. This caused me a lot of problems as I had to learn from my colleagues instead of from the tutor as they could not explain it to me in simple terms, always expecting me to understand what they were talking about when it was foreign knowledge to me.

Very unorganised. There is no set learning plan in place, when I start a new unit the tutors expect you to know what you are doing and essentially leave you to your own devices to work things out. There has also been many moments where the tutors did not know we were supposed to be with them, and as a result we spent days doing nothing whilst we waited for things to be sorted out.

My employer is incredibly supportive. I cannot fault them at all. We have a company support person at the college every day who we can go to with any problems we may have. They never fail to solve any issues we have with the college and have been a saving grace for my experience here. Without this resource, I would have struggled greatly.

Very little support. However, we are chased up about uploading work to ensure we are on track, but again this is mostly from the Severn Trent liaison officer. In regards to the college itself, they often leave you to your own devices to research everything alone or trial and error until you figure it out.

I think that I am learning a lot of new skills from college, but most of this is from independent learning or from my peers who have done electrical qualifications before. The qualification itself is very useful, as I now know the basics of my job role and the sort of tasks I will need to complete from my practical experience at Make Uk.

There is an engineering club which is supposed to run once a week, starting 5 weeks ago. I attended the second meeting with plans to continue for the rest of my time at Make Uk as I was excited by the idea of being involved, but the past 4 weeks have been cancelled, each one on the day of the club, without a valid reason. We were told it was because of funding, but after consulting a higher ranked person we were told this is not true, and as far as they knew it was still running.

Yes

Severn Trent is an excellent employer. They constantly make you feel like a valued member of the team, and the apprentice manager will reply to any concerns you have with haste and ensure you are safe and happy. Everyone who I know is happy with their job and feels appreciated.

I would highly recommend this company to all, especially apprentices. I think it is a great place to work and has a lot of chances to expand in to different roles. There are a lot of company benefits as well. I would recommend this company to any one who wants to work somewhere they feel valued.