Engineering Degree Apprentice - PTME Review

Doing 4-month placements within PTME, currently working in Machining. Been assisting with various tasks, main one has been organising the sectioning of an engine block which had been spray bored at various stages to be used for display purposes. This has been completed, now sorting labels for this. Also been learning how the department works.

Learnt about the different procedures involved in contacting the workshop. Improved my confidence with regards to talking to people I don't know. As part of my task to organise the sectioning of an engine block, I had to talk to several people that I didn't know, and a few of the sub-tasks where I had to talk to people were designed in a way that meant I couldn't progress until I had talked to them

Enjoy the work aspect - learning many skills that are applicable outside work, and developing connections that I will have for many years. College can get boring at times, since we are not always learning about interesting things, however it does need to be done to ensure I have the knowledge to do the enjoyable things.

Seems relatively well organised, however there is sometimes poor communication between work and college. For example, when planning work based project tutorials, college initially put them after the normal college day, despite the fact that they had received complaints about this from JLR when they did it last year. Also, when they changed the tutorial date to Friday mornings, our managers received no warning of this and we had to tell them

Good amount of support. This time last year, had to have 2 weeks off for my mental health, and received support from both work and college upon my return - also had support from work while I was off, not from college though. [This section of the comment has been removed by a member of the RateMyApprenticeship Team because it did not meet our site terms and conditions]

Relatively good amount of support, would be nice to have more support when outside of college though, possibly using online tutorials for revision purposes, etc. Mitigating circumstances are accepted when necessary for assignments, either for having special considerations for marks, or an extension to the deadline (I had to use this last year when I had time off for my mental health)

The qualification gives me the necessary technical knowledge to understand what is going on, since in a lot of engineering situations it is essential to have the base knowledge before you can even attempt to understand something. Some areas are not as relevant as others (learning CAD even though I do not use it in my job role at all), however having knowledge of these things is still useful as there are transferable aspects

Yes - I am a member of the JLR PRIDE network, in the process of becoming a champion to help raise awareness of the network amongst younger employees, particularly apprentices and graduates. Also a member of the Apprentice and Graduate Forum, which supports apprentices and graduates through their schemes and looks for ways to improve them

Yes

Great company to work for, with many great people. Lots of support networks are available if you need them, and everyone is willing to help you if you need it. The automotive industry in general is also going through a very interesting time at the moment with the development of electrification and driverless cars.

Be yourself - you may be able to act like a better person than you may think you are, but it is exhausting to keep that act up, and more often than not people will see through it. Also don't be afraid to question things - there is definitely a "but we've always done it that way" mentality, but this needs to be challenged to keep up with advances in society