Becoming an Electrician in the UK

[ban-all-sheds]

Not a difficult question to get right....

 

[securespark]

https://www.tradeskills4u.co.uk/pages/electrician-courses

 

[ericmark]

Both my son and I both started with different trades, I started as a motor mechanic and bridge builder that's on my apprenticeship deeds, I moved first to auto electrics and then to low voltage, in the main because of working abroad, comment was "Your an electrician fix it." and I did, so I actually took formal exams after becoming an electrician. My son worked with me as an electricians mate on two major jobs, I was clearly teaching him all I could, after I got him a job installing alarms, and he took his night class qualifications with me at a time when it was cheap. He got a job as an electrician wiring new houses, but the inspection and testing was done by some one else.

So we both moved into low voltage electrics working alongside other people who could and did advise us when we asked or got things wrong. After around 4 years my son did become a sole trader, but by that time he had gained a lot of knowledge and also had me to ask when he had problems.

Although in my case I was not trained in low voltage I was trained with extra low voltage and medium and high voltage although never actually worked on electrohaul trucks we still did the stuff in collage, so I had a distinction in year 4 auto electrics and I found working abroad I understood generation far better than many of the low voltage trained electricians, being the only electrician on site powered by 4 x 750 kVA and 1 x 250 kVA generators you had to learn how to put them on line and take them off line quickly, repair the container freezer unit or in the Sahara we would have no eatable food if I didn't get it going.

And in Algeria if I did not follow wiring regulations no one was really worried, what that wanted was a cool room and food, I was the guy who made sure that was what they got. I was there to keep earth moving plant running, but next electrician was 300 miles away, could call him on the radio if really stuck, but except for freezer guy as I had no gas, I didn't call them.

I was actually trained with mains stuff by SLD pumps, at that time they used portable traffic lights which I had been trained to repair, there comment was easier to train me to repair pumps than train a pump man to repair traffic lights. I would swap repair jobs with next depot I repaired their traffic lights, they repaired some of my pumps. I had a crash course in Leeds on how to repair pumps.

After the Falklands war I went out there as an auto electrician, but found I was also working a lot on the mains powered plant, so by time I returned to UK I know batching plants and the like very well, in the main I stayed with the industrial side, working in factories keeping the machines running, from my apprenticeship days my knowledge of hydraulics and pneumatics resulted in me being able to sort problems other struggled with.

By the year 2000 I had been employed a couple of times as an electrical engineer, and the buck stopped with me, so that's when I started getting formal qualifications, I was very lucky, I did not kill anyone or the court case would have not gone well, not that I did anything which was not safe, but I could not have easy proved to a court that I had the skill required, I had the skill but would have been hard to prove specially if anything went wrong.

Doing what I did today would be really hard, I worked for firms many times, I was head hunted as they knew I could do the job, after the Falklands worked for same firm at Sizewell, Seven Bridge, and Heathrow. I moved in Sizewell to work for another large firm again worked for them a number of times, the same machines are used in manufacturing medical supplies to domestic loo cleaners so I could move from firm to firm with my expertise.

On the odd time I did do house bashing, but no money in that, so it was always a between job.

When my daughters central heating failed, I found domestic electrics could also be taxing, it took me 4 hours to work out a micro switch had failed in the motorised valve. Installation in houses is easy, drill holes and pull in cables and connect up, following the rules of course, but maintenance be in industrial or domestic takes more skill, I am sure we could train a monkey to wire a house, but it takes a lot more to work out what has gone wrong. Often the faults are not electrical, I have had some really strange ones, a motor tripping out caused by a bearing being over greased. With that one I was lucky, the engineer had seen it before, and got the cover removed and hand full of grease taken out. But often my job was to find the fault only, once I had found it, the fitters took over, the laptop was one of my most important tools reading what a PLC was doing and why the machine was not running, I also wrote programs from scratch, all part of an industrial electricians job. Yet still took 4 hours to find the faulty micro switch in daughters heating.

Working in house you often don't need to account for your time, however work on some ones house, and it takes 4 hours to find a fault as 5 minutes to correct it, the client is not happy with a 4 hour bill, however armed with that knowledge next time you find fault in 5 minutes and correct in 5 minutes, and customer still not happy at the hour travel charge. Domestic is not easy, central heating likely the worst system to have to work on, new stuff not so bad, but old stuff where the honeywell plan has not been followed to letter and your trying to find the fault turns electricians bald. And then you find it's not an electric fault, the lock shield valve has not been set correct by plumbers.

My son now is the electrical engineer in a glass factory, this weekend sent to Ireland to work in another factory, he has done it the hard way, used up all his holidays over last 5 years to get his degree with open university and he has worked very hard to get where he is, long hours on salary is not fun, but he has moved from house bashing to heavy industry and like me, he would not return to house bashing unless no option. It is hard graft, but very rewarding when you crack the problem and get a machine running again. I did installation including petrol chemical works, I just could not get into the mind set of insuring you don't mark the gland, and all the cables are made to look super neat, shop fitting was not too bad, but one soon got fed up with same thing day in day out, the loo block factory was very interesting, modifying the PLC programs, same with concrete factory, when I wired and first built the concrete press it was pressing a washing machine weight every 3 minutes, by time I had finished tweaking program down to 50 seconds a block.