William Vaughan works at LCA Group four days a week and spends one day attending the Coleg Cambria in Wales, although during the Covid lockdowns this has been remote learning from home. Upon graduation in January 2022 he hopes to gain his BTEC Level 3.
Tell us how you heard of the apprenticeship scheme at LCA Group?
A family friend of mine who currently works at LCA told me about a job vacancy – for a Production Support Operative. I had two interviews and during the second one I was shown around the facility – I was really impressed with how hi-tech it was, I hadn’t seen this at other engineering companies, and I liked that LCA were a forward thinking business who were looking at ways of automating the manufacturing process. This was a real selling point for me as I was excited to have the opportunity to work within an advanced facility.
I was delighted to be offered the job, and then a few months into this role a place on the apprenticeship scheme became available so I decided to go for that as it offered me the chance to study whilst working and accelerate my skills.
What was it about the apprenticeship scheme which interested you?
I have always been a very practical hands-on person, I really enjoyed ‘product and design’ at school and quite a few people within my family are car mechanics, so this type of work is something which I have always been exposed to. The family friend who told me about the initial vacancy was probably my biggest inspiration as he had joined LCA as an apprentice himself some years ago and is now one of the Project Managers.
What do you tend to do on a typical day at LCA?
My workload is split to about 60% build and fit which involves fitting components, trunking and completing din rails. The other 40% is spent on wiring and other miscellaneous jobs such as label production using the Gravograph and cable preparation using the new Artos.
I have been tasked with developing training plans to support the rest of the manufacturing team, so when we get a new piece of machinery or equipment, I am responsible for testing it and going through all the parameters of the software and then I put together training manuals and run sessions to show the rest of the team the most efficient way to use it. This has been great as it has given me some responsibility and a real sense of achievement when I am able to show more senior team members a more efficient way of manufacturing.
Where do you hope to see yourself in five years’ time?
Once I have finished the BTEC Apprenticeship I would hope to be offered a full-time position as a Panel Wireman with LCA Group, and then I would like to embark on the next level of education which would be a HNC in Mechanical Engineering. After that I am not too sure to be honest, but I guess the end goal would be to progress in my career to Project Management and gain as many skills and qualifications as I can along the way. The mentors I have had at LCA have all been so supportive and helped me develop over the past two years, so it would be nice to think one day I can mentor a junior apprentice.