Cameron’s Story
Cameron Sparkes is a 1st Year, Level 3 Maintenance & Operations Engineering Technician Apprentice for PIP Lift Service.
“The best thing about being an Apprentice would have to be the support and guidance that you get. You’re showing up on time, you’re showing willingness, showing keenness, so the guys see that and they think, “Oh, he’s keen. I’m happy to take the time out of my day to show him this, that and the other.” So I’m obviously grateful for that. So yeah, I’d say that’s the best thing, just the support that you get from the guys.”
Check out the videos below, to see what a day in the life looks like for Cameron as a Lift and Escalator Apprentice:
“So I’m part of the three year Apprenticeship course, so I’m currently doing on this first year, the service side of the Apprenticeship. So we’re going around servicing lifts, looking at breakdowns and things like that and fixing the problem, and then the second year I’ll be on the install side, so I’ll be fitting a lift from scratch. I’ll be posted at a place for between 16 to 20 weeks, and that will be installing a lift from start to finish. Third year of the apprenticeship, I get to choose what one I want to go into, either the service side or the install side.”
“So a normal day for me… I guess no day is the same, actually. There’s not really a normal day. I’m on the service side where I have to meet my fitter at around half eight, usually, and that can be literally anywhere in London, so I mean, I’m really having to learn the tubes, which is a real plus for me. I quite enjoy it, so that’s quite good.”
“So I’m currently studying at New City College in Rainham, so I was there last year. They actually found me the Apprenticeship, which I’m really grateful for, and so I work… I’m there on a day release basis, so I work four days and I’m there every Wednesday.”
“So we’ve been on site for a little while now and it’s a hydraulic lift that’s having intermittent problems. I’m just here at the control panel now and it seems to be this. We’ve taken this card out, but the problem seems to be lying with this one. We’ve replaced… We originally thought that it was this card that was the problem. We’ve put this one in it and replaced it. It turns out that that card isn’t the problem. It’s the one behind it, so the original’s back in there now. So yeah, when you’ve got a lift like that, that’s having those sorts of problems, it is quite hard to put your finger on what is actually the issue, what’s going wrong there. That’s why there was some confusion in diagnosing it that way, but that card’s on order now. I think it’s either turning up tomorrow or next week, so we’re going to fit that in the near future.”
“So I’m just going to close on this. The best thing about being an Apprentice would have to be the support and guidance that you get. You’re showing up on time, you’re showing willingness, showing keenness, so the guys see that and they think, “Oh, he’s keen. I’m happy to take the time out of my day to show him this, that and the other.” So I’m obviously grateful for that. So yeah, I’d say that’s the best thing, just the support that you get from the guys, but yeah. Thank you for listening to this video and bye-bye.”
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