Maintenance technician Review

On a day-to-day basis, I am working in the factory helping to maintain the production line and ensure it is constantly running. This includes responding to and fixing any breakdown situations as well as completing Preventative or planned maintenance checks to ensure the quality of machinery and equipment across the production line is safe and up to a good working standard.

As I am working across a wide range of equipment and machinery, I need to lean on a wide variety of skills, which allows me to develop them further, I am also having to constantly learn new and challenging skills depending on the task on hand. Some of these include welding, milling and turning as well as developing fabrication and hand skills.

I have really enjoyed working my way through the programme, I have been given the opportunity to meet with a variety of people as well as learn and use a wide variety of skills. I have enjoyed that every day has been different and I have been able to face a new set of challenges every day.

I think the programme is very well structured. We rotate around the three different production facilities on-site. In each facility, we are rotated around different areas. This means we work with a wide variety of people, allowing us to network with these senior technicians as well as increase our knowledge and skills as each area uses different machinery and maintenance practices meaning we get to learn and experience all of them.

We have private 3 monthly reviews with our training advisor. We also have regular bi-weekly meetings with both our placement managers as well as our training advisor. Our training advisors also run an open door policy meaning where we have full support and any issues can be rectified relatively easily. The main issue is that there is one training advisor split between so many people and it can be a bit tricky to find the time to get a meeting with them.

We have a review every few months. We get minimal feedback on how our theory qualification is going as well as what we still need to complete to ensure we complete it. The reviews we get are based off of self reflection, completing a form rather than having a 1 on 1 discussion.

I believe the qualification has the potential to be effective and useful for the role we are fulfilling, however the delivery and teaching standards make it difficult to relate to the job. I believe there have been occasions where I have been able to understand something and relate to it better than the job at hand.

There are multiple opportunities to get involved with extra-curricular activities. This includes working on the SharePoint team. This is a team that helps deliver news to the apprentice network across all BMW Plants across the UK, There is the charity champions teams, and a social team to plan social events and meet ups for the apprentices outside of work hours.

Yes

I think BMW Group are able to provide a challenging, rewarding and enjoyable experience throughout the apprenticeship. There is lots of support from BMW. As well as every opportunity available, BMW support the learning and development of new and useful skills. There is opportunity to work alongside some very skilled people who are happy to share their knowledge and help the apprentices grow.

I would suggest that you go in confident, be yourself. In the application process, if you are asked a question, do not lie (they will know), and there is much more respect for someone who is willing to admit they are not sure of something, rather than trying to pretend they are.