TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEER Review

the title of my role is called Pole tester and in short terms it is a vital safety role to maintain Openreach/BT telegraph pole plant in the field, testing poles in residential areas and rural areas. Which depending on the stage of the test the pole requires a small excavation at the base of the pole, a probe, hammer test, resistograph test and finally a climb making sure the pole and wood itself is safe to be climbed by other engineers.

i've picked up skills and development through doing the courses that are required of a pole tester. Sign, lighting and guarding course learning about road works and whats required of me to keep myself and members of the public safe while working on the roads and also learning different parts of the business while going through training to understand what other engineers do that effect my job and what i do that will effect their job

the programme started out online due to the ongoing global pandemic, learning my role over teams and what was required with set time tables every day to keep things fresh which can be difficult learning over teams, then in person getting hands on i enjoyed most getting a feel what was expected of me and my peers.

my programme training wise was well structured and thoughout and we were given timetables of what training we would undergo and where it would be, what was required etc. after hands on training and we were given to our apprenticeship assessors it wasnt very well structured, we were passed over to someone from our first assessor who booked all our 10 NVQ days we were given by the company before we had vital parts that were needed for certain units and they are very slow at getting back to submitted work so we are in limbo as we have submitted work which requires the assessor to look through and with no more NVQ days left in company time will potentially have to carry on NVQ units in our own time

support wise the company have been great and have offered time inside work hours if needed to complete the NVQ on time unfortunately the BT assessor we have currently isn't very quick at getting back to work submitted or emails or calls and is slowing the process down considerably

support wise we can contact each other and ask our peers if we need any help as we are going through the same process together but if we are stuck we can send emails or calls to assessors any time in the working day and they should get back to use pretty sharpish to help us complete the units.

personally as a pole tester and plant protection officer the NVQ itself is new to the role and it shows, alot of the question and units don't have much relevance to our day to day job and is much more geared towards the service delivery and fibre side of the job

due to coronavirus its been difficult to get together for any social events or team events, the company tried organise Christmas do's but unfortunately wasn't deemed safe so happened over teams calls. but when the pandemic has gone I'm sure do's and events will happen frequently

Yes

personally my job role gives me freedom to plan my day to day schedule and have minimal contact with my manager unless i or they need/want something, the pay, benefits etc are a lot better than my previous job in the military and make leaving the military to civilian life seamless.

brush up on health and safety and customer service, the two main points Openreach look for is a welcoming face that will provide good customer service and secondly health and safety is at the forefront of everything we do, if you show a good understanding and knowledge of health and safety and why we do it you cant go wrong.