Operations Degree Apprentice Review

Due to the confidentiality of Sellafield I can't go into to much detail about my role, but, I can give a brief overview. My current role is in process engineering. This involves me monitoring different parts of a process such as alarms to find trends. The main goal is to make the process as safe, efficient and cost-effective as possible.

Having only been here a short amount of time, I still have a lot to learn and develop. Although, in this short amount of time I've learnt a lot about safety and nuclear professionalism. These are skills that I will use and continue to develop for the rest of my career.

At the moment I'm really enjoying my program. There may be a lot to learn but I'm really interested in the area and look forward to becoming an expert in this field. At first I was a bit unsure about having a desk job because of my preferred pragmatic approach but soon realised there's actually quite a bit of practicality.

From my experience, I'd say the program is well organised. So far, I haven't experienced any problems and it's gone quite smoothly. To ensure everything stays this way, there are organised meetings every couple of months in which we give feedback. As well as this, the people taking the meetings will make sure we're keeping on track with the academic side of things and help with any problems.

As said above, meetings are held regularly to make sure everything going well and if there are any problems they will be passed on. There are also weekly support sessions we are allowed to attend to help us with our degree. I find these very helpful as otherwise I'd have an extremely busy schedule trying to find the right balance for work and education.

Support sessions are held weekly in which we can go from work to receive help from lecturers. As well as this, the college is open after I finish work so, If I needed to, I could go in the evening to do coursework or access the library. The lecturers are friendly and seem like they want us to do well which is always a supporting factor when you're struggling.

My qualification involves some work based assessments and learning specific to this field. This means that I can apply knowledge from my course inside work so that it's not just wasted. Once I have my degree, I can then proceed to work my way up and possibly even better my qualification.

Nothing has been advertised to me as of yet. I'm aware there used to be certain sports teams but I'm not sure if they're still a thing. this is a shame because it's definitely something me and other people on my course would be interested in.

Yes

Sellafield Ltd is a huge company and so there are areas of work for anyone. I believe the opportunities it can give are great and it's definitely somewhere I can see myself staying for a while. Me being from Carlisle, the only downside was travel but I managed to get a shared accommodation nearby so with a little extra cost that can be avoided for anyone.

If you're not from the area I'd make sure you have travel/accommodation sorted as that can be quite a difficult part. I'd also make sure you're safety competent. Safety is one of the main priorities with this company so it's definitely something you need to get into the routine of. Other than that just be yourself in your application and you'll get a role suited to you.