Civil Engineering Apprentice (Year 1) Review

I am a Civil Engineering apprentice, I am in my first year of my apprenticeship. During the day I will be involved in a variety of tasks which help me learn such as setting out and using the GPS as well as using Civil 3D, writing a site diary and keeping up with general tasks that need doing as well as generally keeping paperwork and the office organized.

Yes the most noticeable to me being how much better I am at working with a team as well as being on the ball when we have lots of things going on on site. I am now much more confident in speaking to people as well as groups of people, I have also learnt about how to use the GPS for surveying and setting out e.t.c as well as learning more about Civil 3D and also completing engineering related documents.

My programme is enjoyable because I work with lots of friendly people who are always willing to help me learn and teach and guide me on my apprenticeship. I enjoy being able to learn about a career I am interested in and put it all to practice in my day to day job whilst I am studying for a qualification.

It is well organized, with set college blocks for when we have to study hard at college, how well organized it is is really good because once we have done our college block we get to spend a lot of months on site, on the job, learning and getting practical experience.

On my apprenticeship I have many people I can go to for help with things, such as my line manager at work, or the project manager, as well as my apprenticeship manager and all of the people who are their for support have always been very good at helping me and responsive.

I receive a good amount of support from my training provider when working towards my qualifications. The college that I attend for the training aspect has lots of brilliant teachers who teach their subjects very well and if I do not understand something the teachers have always been very good at explaining things again in a way that is easy to understand.

When I was at college for my first college block I learnt a lot that I can apply on the site I am working on. For example on site at the moment we are using surveying equipment which I learnt about at college and so I am already familiar with a lot of the equipment we are using. Having a general knowledge about some engineering topics also has helped when talking about things that we are doing on site in meetings and discussions and also understanding what is going on.

Yes everyone who I have met at work are very friendly, although the site is small in BAM employees working on it at the moment. There is still plenty of opportunities to be social, we had a work Christmas evening out as well as this I have been able to socialize with my work colleagues outside of work as regularly as I have wanted to and I have always been made to feel very welcome.

Yes

BAM is a great company to learn from with lots of interesting projects that you could learn from working at BAM or with an apprenticeship with BAM. BAM structures the apprenticeship in a very convenient way whereby we have a college block and then we can focus on work instead of a day release way of doing it. As well as this BAM offers good benefits when you work for them such as a good holiday entitlement.

When applying for BAM make sure to know a lot about what you are applying for and show how interested you are if you are interviewed, someone who is able to show their interest and how keen they are as well as knowing a lot about the field they want to go in to will look attractive to any employers including BAM.