EBME Forums Forums Management Training APPENTICES.

Sounds like the type of thing we are looking
for.
Can you give me more info.
Maybe contacts of training company so that I can
see if there is a similar organisation up
these parts.
:p

Karl
If you email with your address i will send you all the details that we have got.
Regards
Mandy

Karl,

Two years on, how have things turned out?

Anybody out there with up-to-date information on exactly what courses are available these days? After all, it’s no good people banging-on about “the need for degrees”, “voluntary” registration and continuing professional development etc. if the courses are not actually available. For instance, someone told me recently that degrees in medical engineering are no longer on offer in London. Is this truly the case?

Does anybody have the full picture as things currently stand? And what path should a youngster entering the field take today?

…Hello Karl, John? …come in Elvis, …anybody out there ?

We have two mechanical engineers that are both approaching retirement. Both skilled machine shop men with tool making and fine work skills plus lots of experience in the healthcare environment.
How do I go about replacing them?
Does anyone have these skills these days?
I was thinking of getting in a couple of apprentices and using these guys to train them up but do people want to come in to this sort of work and where do I advertise for them. Local papers are no good in central London unless you want legal secretaries or the like.
Anyone else managed to crack this problem and is willing to share their experiences.
Thanks
Robert

helllllllo there, Im back.
Sadly not much to report, we have tried to look at all levels of setting this up. From a regional solution to just employing our own. As background there is a recognised shortage coming up in the coming years, with a lot of people due to retire out of the system at roughly the same time. This is equated to the fact that a lot of departments where set up with people all of the same age group in the late 60,s to early 70,s.
There isnt a lot of bods ot there to bring in that would be up and running so to speak in a short time period. So being from an industrial background myself I thought the best way was the good olde apprenticeships.
Again sadly, there doesnt seem to be a demand for training centres to set up a scheme, "kids only want to be nurses, drs, or it&m bods if they have to work in the NHS", given the option most would choose not to work in NHS at all.
Sadly I personaly tend to think that good old Mrs T did a really smart job of disbanding the afore mentioned systems of training and replacing them with training schemes to get bods off the dole. And they havent really been replaced. Therefore it looks like we could be going it on our own with a trust aprenticeship and our own training schedule, instead of a proper MED ENG APPRENTICESHIP SCHEME.
Hopefully the coming of A4C and SRCT will tie down the future of the trade and things like have happened to other SR groups will be brought in to retain the staff we have and train "properly" the new ones we get, with a view to holding on to them. Instead of training them and having them move on.
Dont quite know what we will do about the fact that kids dont want to work on maintenance anymore, I was always brought up to think we would be the last out of the factory if it shut down, because the bosses would always want the equipment maintained or stripped down properly.
Anyway Ive had me little rant.

You think it’s difficult were you are getting training imagine it in the out lying regions Hebrides, Isle of Man and Channel islands etc.
Flying out for a day course and flying back afterward imagine your mind set on arrival.
Also the cost to the trusts also trying to encourage locals to do this, Nothing against our English comrades but it takes a lot of mental adjustment for non locals to be able to cope with our way of life.

Some of you may be saddened to reflect upon the closure, in August this year, of the Army Apprentices College at Arborfield. Our modern government apparently saw no need to continue training young REME mechanics and technicians at this fine establishment, which started out as the Army Technical School in 1939.

The old “Boy’s School”, as many of us knew it, closed its famous gates in the 1980’s when a new, smaller, college was built near by. The name was changed to Princess Marina College (then back again to the Army Apprentices College), and it finally ended up being called the Army Technical Foundation College (…perhaps the word “apprentices” causes offence to somebody – too “cloth cap”, perhaps?).

In these enlightened times, one can only assume that the MOD, like the NHS, prefers to take it’s young technicians readily available “off the shelf”, thereby saving itself the trouble and expense of training up its own. Does anybody know where these eager youngsters are actually to be found?

Don’t be surprised, guys, to find a technician from Eastern Europe at a workbench near you very soon!

Well I for one was very proud of my `cloth cap' especially when the peak had been slashed!!
The closing of Arborfield is going to have an long and ongoing effect, not only in the Electro Med field but also in other areas of engineering.
I have been in Electro Med both service (REME) and civy in the UK and Germany since the late 1960's and in all situations the `Arborfield Apprentice' has been extreamly well recieved (even a German civy company that I worked for had some knowledge of what it was).
I have worked with techs from the former Yugoslavia and Rommania, the main problem that I found was not technical as this can be taught/learnt, but communication skills - not only in a different language, but also in attitude. But then at my age I sometimes find the attitudes of some of the young Brits hard to understand!!
I don't know the answers but do know that we have to keep on striving to come out of the `back room'

All the best to all for 2005 and the future

John Langdon (`Horace' Arborfield intake 60c)