Degree apprentice Review

On a day to day basis I will respond to emails, and will send emails requesting information. I review documents given to me by my supervisor. I also am in charge of arranging testing for some equipment that comes under our contract. I have been placed in charge of getting some equipment updated and then distributed.

During my first placement, I had a lot of responsibility around using excel and because of this I attended a few days training in data analysis utilising Excel and this greatly developed my skills and knowledge of this system. I have also developed my communication skills as I have had to communicate with a wide range of people from different backgrounds and qualifications. I have developed my presentation skills through presenting back information to the team.

I find that when I have enough work to do and when I have had the work explained clearly to me then I enjoy the work I do but there are times when I haven’t had enough work or the work I was given wasn’t that interesting. That would be the same in any job and so overall I have enjoyed it and I have had a lot of great experiences as a result and have seen lots of cool things.

The apprenticeship itself is fairly well organised and there is a plan that we do 8 placements over the whole 5 years which is good to know at the start. However, sometimes we don’t receive information very early regarding when and what we will do in our next placements which makes it hard to plan ahead.

As and when I need support or help I can easily contact my managers and they will then provide a response, usually fairly promptly. Only a few times have I been waiting more than a day or two for help and that was only on larger issues that required more time to look into the issue.

Our degree is provided by University, West of England, but our course is actually taught by University Centre Weston. They are fairly good and the classes are fairly small which makes it a lot easier to ask questions and get help from the lecturer.

The university degree that we receive is not really that relevant to what we are doing in the work place. The degree is more designed at those who will be designing the aircraft or designing parts of it where are we in defence equipment and support are the middle man between the designers and the customers and so I haven’t used anything I’ve learnt in uni so far. The NVQ is useful though and means that my placement supervisor gives me work that will fulfil the NVQ and so the work is more useful.

There are clubs and sports and other such things that I could join through work at defence equipment and support, but due to me living over an hour away I have not joined any or taken part in any of the activities. We also have the option to join any clubs that are done through University, West of England. There are regular networking events through work.

Yes

Through working for defence equipment and support I have had lots of opportunities that I would otherwise never have got. I have been to RAF bases and seen aircraft up close and have been allowed to look inside. I have been up to the Battle of Britain memorial flight and looked at spitfires and the Lancaster bomber, I got to sit in a typhoon, I also met Prince William on one of my trips. I have been over to Philadelphia for meetings with Boeing and got to enjoy looking around the city in the evenings and also the work I do can be very interesting to see how engineering works from a middle man perspective.

One tip that I would give would be to make the most of every opportunity that you get given because I have found that managers are always supportive of you going on opportunities and they are definitely worthwhile. I would also suggest that if you find that some of the work you have isn’t what you imagined or isn’t as useful as you’d hope then talk to your manager and ask for work and tell them what NVQ you need to cover.