Engeneering Apprentice Review

Working with fully trained and competent engineers to complete a variety of different maintenance, overall or fault finding tasks. This can involve basic exam work which aims to prevent issues and fix them before they become serious. Or it could be that a fault has been reported and we need to identify and correct it.

Seeing as my previous experience in the rail engineering field was non existent I have learnt a great deal from my time working with other engineers. These range from hand skills, such as using and setting a torque wrench to specific skills related to working on the units. All my previous hand skills have also been greatly improved.

I enjoy my program to the extent that I do not mind coming in to work every day and am willing to develop my knowledge and skills actively whilst at the work place. However the training courses, both those provided by NTAR and GTR are some what lacking and could be improved with either more engaging trainers or better access to equipment.

Not very Well organised as there is minimal contact between the college we used, our employer and the training academy (NTAR) because of this poor communication we often struggle to keep up with the work load as it is shifting constantly. This is probably because GTR has not used NTAR before and so there are still issues to iron out.

Not much because of the large number of apprentices within govia thameslink railway there is not much time for you individually to catch up with your line manager and the trainer for apprentices lacks current knowledge due to them being off of the shop floor for many years, your best support comes from other apprentices

We did all of our knowledge assignments in the first year and so we no longer have contact with them. However when we did they were often available to provide support but as they were generic tutors and not rail specific their support was often limited due to no fault of their own

As our roll is learning skills needed to become effective engineers the qualification is useful, however in day to day experience the knowledge side of the qualification will not really help you except for the basic and specific knowledge given to you about the trains themselves. In general if you want to progress to managerial levels it is more useful

No there are not any extra curricular activities so I do not know how to make this response meet the fifty word minimum. Because of this I believe that your servey should have a yes or no option where you do not have to write so much when there is nothing to write about

Yes

Despite being lacking in some areas the day to day experience has been positive and it is a good gate way in to other companies which may have better employee relations, this is given through achieving Govia thameslink railways training requirements which can be transferred to other types of train

Be prepared to do a lot of independent work because it is often essential in order to complete tasks on time, the engineers you will work with have a lot more to offer you than the training courses so make sure to ask questions about everything you do because they have the most in depth knowledge.