Engineering Technician Review

coming to work and learning how the department I'm currently in works. this can require just shadowing someone qualified or even taking on responsibility myself to carry out and complete a task. I have been involved in product integration making sure parts fit to cars as well as dynamic validation testing numerous functions of the cars.

learnt an awful lot about the company and how big corporations have their own standards and methods that processes should be carried out to. lots of simplistic knowledge expanded upon to help expand my problem solving understanding. lots of hand skills where acquired in the first year but for me this just developed existing skills as I already had an interest in making things.

I enjoy the work I get involved in. there is a nice amount of desk based work compare to hands on testing, experimenting and analysing. sometimes the academic studies can get a bit over whelming and are often timed poorly meaning a lot is due in at once. this can be stressful.

not greatly organised. things do get done but often with a fair amount of pushing from the apprentices themselves. some apprentices have had to stay in the same placement as the next steps for them have not been organised. also seems to be minimal communication between the company and the academic provider as its not often clear what is going on and one side may give a different story to the other

a fair amount. throughout our placements we have regular catch up meetings with our training advisors. it is definitely a meeting we can feedback what is going on, often it does feel like there is nothing done with the information we have given and other times something may change. again it comes back to communication between the company and academic providers as most issues come from the academic provider but our BMW training advisor cant do too much about that.

the training provider try and give support but the quality is very poor and the quality of teaching is extremely lacking. it becomes very difficult to learn and then due to the lack of knowledge we end up doing the wrong things and lots of pointless work. this becomes very frustrating as no matter how hard we try we never get any useful information out of our tutor.

not at all. I haven't yet used a single piece of academic knowledge that I have learnt on this program in my day to day placement role within the company. there is some correlation but it always ends up being pointless. for example we have learnt some CAD for our qualification and I may also use CAD in the workplace yet in the workplace completely different software's are used meaning everything I learnt was pretty pointless.

yes there are opportunities to get involved with extra activities to increase social networks and team building skills

Yes

even when there may be issues I believe it is still a good opportunity being offered as you get into the world of work with a job whilst also having you're education paid for you. I think apprenticeships all around are a good opportunity for anyone that wants to develop academically whilst also working.

show youre interested in the company and the development and future of the world of vehicle manufacturing.