Advanced Practical Apprentice - Fitter Review

This apprenticeship is everything I could have asked for: since a young age, I have loved aviation after visiting the airport frequently with my grandad and watching the planes taking off and landing. I also love engineering, and therefore a Rolls-Royce apprenticeship was a perfect opportunity for me. The apprenticeship enables you to make great friends, it helps you work on your communication and teamworking skills, you learn about interesting subjects - all whilst working for a world-class company such as Rolls-Royce and whilst being paid. I couldn't recommend the apprenticeship enough.

I have developed my practical skills, which has helped me carry out my work to a high standard, and it has also helped me outside of work in my hobbies when working on racing cars and doing DIY at home. The apprenticeship has also helped me improve my communication skills and helped me come out of my shell in order to work effectively with my friends and colleagues, which in turn has improved my teamworking skills.

I love my apprenticeship. Of course, when working for such a large business such as Rolls-Royce, there are bound to be some organisational hurdles which can be frustrating and demoralising, but finding a way to work around these hurdles in order to still get the most out of the apprenticeship is rewarding and the hard work pays off. I've made great friends and amazing memories on the Outward Bound trips in my first and second years.

As previously stated, it can sometimes be a bit disorganised. My intake were the first to use the new Valid-8 system used to upload and mark work (ideally) easily, but sometimes this was not the case as miscommunication between the Valid-8 team, assessors in the workplace, and apprentices can sometimes cause some hold-ups when trying to get work done. Derby College ran my further education courses, and in the most part, this was fine, however there were some difficulties around some members of staff not understanding our level (BTEC Level 2 & 3), and some lecturers leaving without notice which held us back as students. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, DCG helped us with online learning which was relatively helpful in the circumstances, and I managed to finish all of my assignments on-time and to a high level.

We get plenty of support from our apprentice development leaders (ADLs), through regular reviews where they would come to our place of work and chat to us about our progress and give us some motivation and help if and when we need it. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have had a lot of support from our ADLs in particular, through WhatsApp groups to ease regular communication, and weekly calls updating us on when we were expected to come back to work.

Our qualification is made up of several job-specific units, such as dressing aircraft engines, and carrying out test bed runs. These help us target our work so that we both understand the job we are doing ready for our end-point assessment (EPA) and if we were to work in that job in the future, as well as enabling us to get our work completed in a timely manner with the help of those working with us on the placement.

Yes

Rolls-Royce is a great company to work for: you have the unrivalled opportunity to work on some legendary jet engines for legendary aircraft, such as the Trent 900 which powers the Airbus A380, and the Trent XWB which powers the Airbus A350 - all whilst making great friends and memories, learning about interesting subjects, developing your practical skills which is beneficial in both professional and personal life, and being paid a great salary for our age.

Rolls-Royce is one of the most important businesses in the UK. We make some of the best jet engines for some of the best aircraft in the air today, but Rolls-Royce also has a big part to play in the war efforts, with the famous Merlin engine which powered the iconic Spitfire amongst many others. The number one tip I would give to anyone applying to Rolls-Royce is be proud: if you understand the importance of the company you have the honour of working for, then your work will be done to a higher level and you will get a lot more out of the apprenticeship.