HGV Apprentice Review

I am currently a heavy vehicle apprentice at Babcock International which is a 3 year apprenticeship. Over my course, I go on rotations around the company working on different sections around the business to widen my experience and knowledge. Work varies from small projects to big projects. Every day varies which is exciting and makes the job interesting.

Over my apprenticeship, I have learnt skills like Hand Tooling, Health and Safety and Good Housekeeping, General mechanics, tooling and machining. There is much more I have learnt, but this is just a brief description.

The apprenticeship is going well. We get a lot of hands on training which I enjoy on the shop floor, but also get the experience at the college we attend. Overall, the colleagues at work are nice and working at Babcock is a good environment.

Generally, the structure of our apprenticeship programme could definitely improve as it is not very well managed. This could be as the programme had several different apprentice managers during the apprenticeship and also the college where we study is not great. But the company is trying to fix this the best they can going forward and have understood the areas of improvement.

I received support during the apprenticeship from my apprentice masters on the sections and rotations I have been on. They have been helpful and supportive when moving to different sections and understanding the work and adapting to other sections quickly. Sometimes, it is not clear how long we are on the section for or when we are moving to another section so there is no plan of that, which I think would be beneficial.

I receive a lot of support from my training provider.

Generally, our training provider is Warwickshire College. Theory and practical are relevant for exams working towards our end qualification, but there are some areas they could improve such as communication, organisation and structure of plan when we are there for block releases. Through our 2nd year, we had to change exam boards from IMI to Auto axel due to issues from previous exams board (IMI) as the exams were poorly written.

There are some extra -curricular activities to get involved in. I do play football for Babcock which I enjoy. I am able to have fun after work and also have something to look forward to.

No

Personally, I would love to recommend it to a friend. But due to some set backs and problems that have occurred during the apprenticeship, I will not. If there were improvements in the coming years, I would definitely recommend it, but at this point in time improvements are needed to make it a better apprenticeship.

Tips and advice I would offer to others applying to Babcock is to be enthusiastic, use your initiative, engage in your work and ask lots of questions, be happy to help and able to have good relationships with your colleagues, be a good team player and get stuck into projects and training courses which will benefit you and the company.