Latest / The Electrical Show / The Journey From Apprentice To Master
Transcript
- 0:01The Electrical Show with Thomas Naji sponsored by Boss Professional Powerful power tools for measuring
- 0:07tools and experts accessories. Welcome to the Electrical Show here on Fixed Radio with
- 0:15Bosh Professional. I'm your host Thomas Naji, and with me once again is
- 0:19Paul Meaning at the side on this with hello. On this week's show,
- 0:24we're going to track the journey from apprentice to master in the trade and discuss
- 0:30what each step was like for us. Now music over the coin fact.
- 0:35Before music, I like to have my short little what should we call it?
- 0:39We should give this a name, Paul, this little where I give
- 0:42little anecdotes of life knowledge. Let's give it a name. Well, my
- 0:47first thought was nighttime nagy, but it's not nine o'cloud. Depending on whether
- 0:50you're listening this at ten o'clock, it is nighttime nargy. But text in
- 0:56some ideas. Yes. Eighty one four hundred started message with the word fix
- 1:00now last week in actually in the first link I was talking about the delay
- 1:04of gratification and just going on from that, there was another. I love
- 1:10reading these studies and stuff and just learning. All the people call me boring.
- 1:17I don't care life experience like life experience is really like we can talk
- 1:23about electrical stuff, but some of the most for me, like some of
- 1:26the most important stuff you can talk about is actually just like life lessons,
- 1:30like human stories, and everyone is so you know, we're talking about business
- 1:34and stuff, and everyone is so fixated on earning money more. To be
- 1:38fair, I am also like that, you know. But there was a
- 1:42study that was done and what they found. I'm still trying to get this
- 1:47person, I said about two years ago. I'm trying to get this the
- 1:49woman who did this study, she's a doctor at Birmingham University or something,
- 1:56and she did a study and anyway, what she found was that happiness,
- 2:00it loosely equates to money. So what she found was that as as your
- 2:06wages increase, your level of happiness increases, which would make sense. So
- 2:09money doesn't buy happiness, but it buys you the things which make your life
- 2:14a bit easier, which give happiness. Okay, but that only goes up
- 2:17to about seventy five grand. So what she found is fascinating. Up to
- 2:23seventy five grand, happiness kept on increasing, but it plateaued us after seventy
- 2:28five grand. It made no difference to people's levels of happiness. So basically
- 2:31what I'm saying is you could have an income of two million a year.
- 2:35People were no happier up there than they were at seventy five. Seventy five
- 2:38was the cutoff point. Wow, yeah, that's all it is. Seventy
- 2:42five that was all she found in this study. And it was a big
- 2:44study. It was a lot of people she are and well that was what
- 2:46she came back with as a results. So we think about if we have,
- 2:51you know, half a million a year or something will be much happier,
- 2:54studies suggest otherwise. So you have a deep and meaningful moment. Well,
- 3:00if you've got two people, if you if you're a husband and wife
- 3:01with two point four kids and you both earning seventy five k, that's a
- 3:05really you know, if you've both got good jobs, if you're earning seventy
- 3:07five k, that's as happy as you're going to be. So chasing millions
- 3:10and millions and millions isn't necessarily going to make you happier, as what I'm
- 3:14saying. So it's food for thought. Hmm, Yeah, that's what I
- 3:16thought. Music over the next hour from look, no one knew that everyone's
- 3:21on side, thinking it's really interesting. That's why they tune in Fix radio
- 3:27time to crack on. You're listening to the electrical show and we're plotting the
- 3:30journey from being an apprentice to being a seasoned professional and discussing what that was
- 3:38like for us. Now, Paul, what was your apprenticeship? Like,
- 3:44Ah, you go, then I'll go traumatizing. That's that's pretty across the
- 3:50board now. At the time, it was really hard because mine was split
- 3:53because the company I worked for initially they kind of like closed after a year.
- 3:58That was domestic commercials off. Then I jumped on rail and let's put
- 4:04mental health was not a consideration during my apprenticeship. There were many times I
- 4:08went home crying or I got hit with bits of conduit or unistrut. I
- 4:12hate to say it out loud, but it did actually happen. Eventually I
- 4:16did retaliate and it was almost a writer passage. But did I learn loads?
- 4:20Yes? Did it help me on my journey to becoming a young man,
- 4:25Yes? Did it teach me stuff that my father never taught me?
- 4:28Yes? Did it show me what good people were and bad people were?
- 4:31It started to give me an idea that there were some good and bad people.
- 4:35Would I change any of it? No little bit. Apprentices have changed
- 4:41definitely because mine was a million miles removed from that. We would I think
- 4:46I was like a year one apprentice and we were drilling into a concrete ceiling
- 4:51to put anchors, dropping anchors, hammer them in, put some stud But
- 4:57you've got to drill the whole perfectly square both ways. Now, obviously I
- 5:01wasn't paying a lot of attention, and mine weren't perfectly square, and I
- 5:04think absolutely hate I wanted his head on a spike. I hated the guy.
- 5:10And he just came behind me and just stuck the drill bit in and
- 5:12it was literally like a forty five degree angle, and I remember he just
- 5:15took it out of the hand and just literally we were building a hospital at
- 5:18rd and E down next to her, and he just launched this drill bit
- 5:23that is ten mil bit across the site. It's so embarrassing because that was
- 5:26just ingrained in my head now. But there's a lot of stuff you just
- 5:29can't do now, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because like it was
- 5:32horrible, but it is really weird because I have apprentices now and I find
- 5:35myself being really nice to them. Yeah. Yeah, I also don't have
- 5:39to go no no, no, no, go old school. Don't bully
- 5:41them, don't intimidate them. Yeah, but put them under a little bit
- 5:44of pressure and just watch them creak. And that I know it sounds a
- 5:47bit some people are probably going, oh no, that's terrible. That there
- 5:49is a certain level of pressure which is a healthy pressure, because becoming a
- 5:54tradesman, in your apprenticeship, it's about being having pressure applied to you in
- 5:58a way where you will come You will come up, you will you will
- 6:00develop the right thinking, you will develop the right way of doing things,
- 6:03whether it be physical works or mental thinking. And that pressure is the eat,
- 6:10sleep, repeat of it is what gives you the experience to be a
- 6:13very good tradesman. We don't go to the extents now of hitting people.
- 6:17And I got a certain depot I had. I remember I had an Abb
- 6:21Steward's a boiler suit on and it was loose for me, and I remember
- 6:26a bit of shallow unistrup being going through my arms and being mounted to a
- 6:29frame for a few hours. I remember my camera. I had one of
- 6:33those old thirty five mil film cameras, throw away ones that I know.
- 6:36Spent a lot of my salary on trying to take photos to show my tutor
- 6:41that I was doing big boys stuff, you know, big armors. And
- 6:44I remember being sent out for dinner and all the lads lining up outside Wembley
- 6:47train care depot dropping their pants, taking photos on my camera, putting there,
- 6:51putting my camera down their pants. This is a true story. And
- 6:56then I would go home and go, oh the cameras, you know,
- 6:58give it to my missusgo could you get out of helop because I'm busy working
- 7:00long hours. And then about two weeks later when the film got developed,
- 7:04it was just a roll of bums. And so yeah, I got lots
- 7:09of pranks. I think. One other thing which really annoyed me when I
- 7:15finished my apprenticeship, I was at Waterloo and my missus as a present,
- 7:18bought me some brand new Nicare trainers, my first ever pair, and the
- 7:21lads came fixed them to the ceiling of Waterloo station and I went into the
- 7:28foreman, God bless him, and I was fuming because they let me go
- 7:31early. It was a night shift, and I said them, bleep,
- 7:34bleep, bleep bleeps have done this? You need to sack them. And
- 7:38when I told him what happened, he just sat back. In his Irish
- 7:40accent, he went, there are some lads and I was like, oh
- 7:44man, she's gonna kill me. But do you know what all them I
- 7:46love and respect all them lads, and it builds some great memories. So
- 7:51take the rough with this move, and it is definitely part of building your
- 7:56character and your caliber as a tradesman. So I wouldn't change anything, but
- 8:01it's changed a bit. I mean, you wouldn't change anything. But looking
- 8:03at modern apprenticeships now, there does seem to be a different expectation for what
- 8:09apprentices expect because I don't know. Yes, I seem to find that there's
- 8:13a very much you need to give me that I'm entitled to this I once
- 8:18have this. There is an ever ever growing gap and a problem with apprentices
- 8:22And again it's owner my opinion. As an employer, I have a set
- 8:26of expectations that are generational. The modern apprentices now spend their first year in
- 8:30college just doing health and safety. Now they're doing that for a reason.
- 8:33Is it because our generation failed so badly at health and safety that they're trying
- 8:37to improve it? And going right, You can't actually be near anything because
- 8:41years ago, when you're an apprentice, you weren't allowed to do jack anywhere
- 8:45on all live stuff until they knew you had half a brain on you and
- 8:48you were supervised. But evidently, I think over the years the apprenticeship standard
- 8:52or the application of what apprentice is. I know from experience there are some
- 8:58companies that will employ lots of apprentices, but they're not the cheap labor.
- 9:01They call them apprentices so they can pay them little and they don't teach them,
- 9:05and that does you know that can be detrimental to some people come into
- 9:07the industry sadly because they'll end up leaving. But yeah, it's a lot
- 9:11different now. We need to our expectations is not others reality, and we
- 9:16need to adapt our expectations for what are a modern apprentices. However, it
- 9:22is within our realm of influence to make sure that the practical skills of that
- 9:26trade are taught and measured to what we expect. To be honest with you,
- 9:31our apprentices should be better versions of us. Let's be perfect, frank,
- 9:33because there will come a time when you let them go out by themselves.
- 9:37And we've got an apprentice where I work young lad Joe. When I
- 9:41first met him five years ago he was wet behind the ears. Now he's
- 9:46a very confident, calm, you know, very positive thinking, good electrician.
- 9:50It's great to a shiva. So it does work. You don't have
- 9:54to beat it into them, is what I'm saying. Well, let's talk
- 9:58about how we can become competent and which don electricians. Next The Electrical Show
- 10:03Thursday from three and catch up anytime at Fix Radio dot co dot uk the
- 10:07builder station Fix Radio. This is the Electrical Show with Bosch Professional and Thomas
- 10:13Naji with Paul Mean, and we're talking about the route we take from being
- 10:18a novice apprentice to being a master of your craft. Now, Paul,
- 10:26key steps, what do we think key steps that can't be missed when you're
- 10:28turning yourself into let's say, a thoughtful independent member of our trade. For
- 10:35me, the most important step it was realizing that I can. I know
- 10:41it sounds very corny, but I remember when I was a first year,
- 10:45second year and I want to be able to do that. I want to
- 10:46be able to do that. And then as I went through my time,
- 10:50realizing that actually I was exceeding what I thought i'd want to do. You
- 10:54know, by the time I was in my four fear of my apprenticeship,
- 10:56I was building unistrup frames, putting panels up, glanding big armoreds, and
- 11:01I was doing it by myself. Because the former like, yeah, he's
- 11:03a machine, he's young, he's keen, he's hungry, runs around like
- 11:07a lunatic. You know, he does put a shift in, especially because
- 11:11I was the apprentices and the foreman's got permission from me old man to you
- 11:13know, treat me quite aggressively. So I worked, I put a shift
- 11:18in, and the minute I finished my apprenticeship, I was being put in
- 11:20charge of jobs. So it was that. But I wouldn't have accepted that
- 11:24if I didn't have that realization moment of I can do that. I can
- 11:28actually build a backbone of free compartment trunk in and unistructure piece brackets, and
- 11:33I can do this, and I know what a single point of failure is,
- 11:35and I know what this is. You definitely come into a realization.
- 11:39I think for a lot of people it doesn't happen sometimes until later on,
- 11:43sometimes past the four or five years. But I think, why we I
- 11:46mean for me, especially, an apprenticeship is four or five years minimum before
- 11:50you'd come out and go right, I can actually now do this by myself,
- 11:54lead other people train, other people share that knowledge. I know some
- 11:58apprenticeships are well on. Training courses are very short, but very very short,
- 12:03ridiculously, But we won't get into that. What kind of learning do
- 12:05we think we're going to be needing after the apprenticeship, because it's kind of
- 12:07like saying, you know, you learn to drive after you pass your test.
- 12:11Yeah, that's a really good saying. Actually, yeah, you've got
- 12:13you like, but that's not you know, the journey only starts when you
- 12:16get a cart and one assessing you anymore, the journey starts. I mean
- 12:20that's how that's where your journey begins. It's like, that's your that's your
- 12:24your start point. You've never had that before, No, never, You're
- 12:28full of philosophy to drive. Honestly, you learn to drive after you pass
- 12:31your test. I my test anyway. But moving on, there's a whole
- 12:39there's a whole episode in that at allowed it to night time Najia I.
- 12:45It depends on the direction that you want to go. So if you just
- 12:48want to be a good grafter and just earn your money. If if you
- 12:52know what you know and your your workmanship is good, you will be selected
- 12:56out to be doing all the work, doing all the overtimes. During the
- 12:58weekend, the work will be there for you on a plate. If you
- 13:01want to go into supervision, you know there's there's a journey you've got to
- 13:05go on to. You've got to get some maybe some formal safety qualifications,
- 13:07even like the SSSTS if you want to just do some site supervision. If
- 13:11you're an electrical contractor, if you want to, you know, take a
- 13:15step up. You do your SMSTS so you can be a qualified site manager
- 13:18that used to be recognized by CDM rigs. If you want to go into
- 13:22project management, you could do some maybe contractual training, learn what the NEC
- 13:26contracts are, the JCT because the end of the day, you're going to
- 13:28go from one day putting Unich strap on the wall job Bo's going right,
- 13:33You're not only doing the day sheets, but you're going to represent them some
- 13:35site. So you need to know when somebody's telling you do this, do
- 13:37this one, it's a change, how do you administer that? So there's
- 13:41a huge we never stop learning in this trade regardless of what you do.
- 13:43And this is the trouble you can never master, in my opinion, everything
- 13:48in this trade, because not only have you got THEMS, the domestic,
- 13:50the commercial of the industrial, you've got the different levels, the different approaches
- 13:54where you're an apprentice electrician, a text way, a lead formant, a
- 13:58project manager, project engineer, a site engineer, contracts engineer. There's so
- 14:03many variants. It's like looking at the sun from different angles. Everybody sees
- 14:07the sun, but the journey will be slightly different, and the temperature and
- 14:09pressure there under will be slightly different. So it all depends on where you
- 14:15want to go. But the one thing people need to realize is the weld
- 14:18youh oister in this trade because there's not enough of us. Yeah, there's
- 14:20just not enough. I think it's going to get it's going to get even
- 14:24worse. I think give it ten years. I said that ten years ago,
- 14:30and I'm seeing how really desperately bad it is. More. I think
- 14:35some of it has probably focused on my LinkedIn posts in the negative, but
- 14:37I generally ten years ago read a report that said we are going to be
- 14:41in a dire state with the trades and the number of people in trades and
- 14:46then to see that thing from the Construction Leadership Council that was talking about hundreds
- 14:48of thousands of people have left and not many people have joined. All it
- 14:52did was ratify that. And as someone who orders the work, because that's
- 14:56what I do do I order the work, I sometimes have to order the
- 14:58work into an abyss and with contractors going sorry, I ain't got any staff,
- 15:01I can't get good people, and he's just like, ah, there's
- 15:05a bigger problem here. But when you're the person ordering the work, you've
- 15:09then got to have a conversation with people who don't know anything about the construction
- 15:11trades, and that's the client organizations, which is why I wish there would
- 15:16be more done to educate the client entities because they don't know that. They
- 15:20don't know in a lot of unless they have someone like me, they don't
- 15:24know that. They don't know. They're unconsciously incompetent. That's a I like
- 15:28that unconsciously. We've spoken about this before. Actually, yeah, they are
- 15:31unconsciously incompetent. And that's why a lot of tradesmen, regardless of where they're
- 15:35working, will meet a client and that client won't know, they won't know
- 15:39that, they don't know any of this stuff. You're doing your best.
- 15:39They'll just think you're trying to rip them off. They're not. And that's
- 15:43kind of why I enjoy being a client, because I try and be fair
- 15:46as a client and not a horrible person. I mean, you're pretty well,
- 15:52I mean, very well accomplished. But have you ever been guilty of
- 15:56sort of standing still and missing opportunities? Oh? God, yeah, yeah,
- 16:00I've turned down some absolute Yeah, I've had loads of people of the
- 16:06years. So you set mere an electrical company. I said that, I
- 16:08think a couple of months back. I was always too scared to do it.
- 16:11And I've had people approach me and say to me, please, could
- 16:15you come and do this work? We actually like the conduct of what you
- 16:18do, we like the level of detail and analytics that you have, and
- 16:22I've always been too scared to do it. And now I kicked myself.
- 16:25I'd like to go back in time and beat myself up over a few decisions
- 16:29we made. But OK, those as long as you reflect upon them and
- 16:33you try and not make them again, then you know less and learn.
- 16:34I suppose fixed Radio I'm Thomas and argue with Paul mean and here on the
- 16:40Electrical Show, and we are talking about the journey from being an apprentice to
- 16:44an electrician. And Paul, let's say you've come into the trade in your
- 16:48late teens, which is quite common now more and more people are training later
- 16:52on in their life. What in your head does success look like sort of
- 16:57ten years on, like late ties as an electrician? How does that?
- 17:03That's a really good question. Again, what does success look like? I'm
- 17:07going to go back to when I was in my twenties. Success looks like
- 17:10your wallet being full. Yeah, I mean yeah, Well when you exp
- 17:15you're not going to sit there and go, well, I did this swan
- 17:18neck on some conjurit the other day and it was lovely. And I go
- 17:19back and visit here every few years. Because I'm talking out of it.
- 17:22No, it's actually I was on that job and I owned a fortune,
- 17:26and more importantly, I got to wine and die in the Missus. I
- 17:30had some good fun times with the lad's life was good. That to me
- 17:33is the measure when you're in your young and you're in your twenties, That's
- 17:37that is the measure, isn't It's living? All right? Well, look
- 17:40Some people might decide that this sort of journey culminates with being a you know,
- 17:44you then become a bars and you and then you employ other sparks.
- 17:47But that's also just the beginning of another journey, isn't it, Because I
- 17:51mean that's a whole world in itself. I mean, that's the world you
- 17:52said. That's the journey you said you wanted to take. You're looking back
- 17:56at it now, but you haven't. Yeah, well, I kind of
- 18:00It's weird. My twenties was I started my journey into being a manager for
- 18:06I hate these terms in various large contracting organizations and stuff into the role I
- 18:11mean now, which is a client. But yeah, I mean when you're
- 18:15in your late twenties, ken, it all depends on what you want.
- 18:18I know, lads are quite happy to be sparks, you know, forever.
- 18:21It's only when you hit your late thirties and if you're not fit and
- 18:23healthy, then your back twinges, in your arm twinges, and you'd start
- 18:27going the iron need to get off the tools. But there's no wrong in
- 18:30the direction you take because if you're in your mid thirties or late twenties,
- 18:34or you're fought in you want to change or become a manager for electrical contractors
- 18:41or a site manager, whatever, brilliant. How much experience you've got,
- 18:45Look how much experience of install you will be incredibly useful. There are people
- 18:48screaming out for experienced people to help. And the thing is as well,
- 18:52if you're on a site and you've got trades, you can mold the quality
- 18:56expectations to what you want so that it ain't just chuck it in and run
- 19:00away. You can actually do saying go, look, lads, we're not
- 19:03going to roun on this job. But I want us all to look back
- 19:04and when somebody says, watch your favorite job, it was that one.
- 19:08Because we've all got jobs that standout a mile and it was always the lads.
- 19:11It was always the behaviors of the site management and the work that you
- 19:14were able to do. That was what you were most proud of. I
- 19:15wired all the pyro on excel Are in ninety eight. I think it was
- 19:22ninety nine or something like that, and I still look back all these years
- 19:25ago and go, that was the best Piro I've ever done. I was
- 19:26up in the freezing cold at night by myself. It was awesome. It
- 19:30was a great job, and the blokes were great, the supervisors were great,
- 19:33and you had time to do the job well. So yeah, it's
- 19:37different, different things for different people. But how many hours have you put
- 19:41in to where you've got? I mean, because you've done so much in
- 19:45terms of like just constant cp doing CPD. I mean, I was trying
- 19:52to think of a better word, but I mean that's the only one I
- 19:53could think. Earning just learning too many, To be honest with you,
- 19:59I think one year, I actually about three four years ago I started to
- 20:03properly, properly record and document it. Like if somebody was listening and they
- 20:07wanted to try to get to where you are with that level of knowledge,
- 20:10how what have you done to get that? Read? Re read that's it?
- 20:15Read, get a highlight a pen. Three years ago, my CPD
- 20:18return, which is the stuff I did record, was at eight hundred and
- 20:19sixty nine hours. The year after that was about six hundred. This year
- 20:23I'm up to about four hundred and then this is a slow year. People
- 20:27don't realize, especially in trades, when you open up a I don't know,
- 20:30an extract fan you fit in on a site somewhere and you have to
- 20:33read that manual. That's learning because you're gonna sit there and go. I
- 20:37didn't know that that manufacturer's got specific requirements. I didn't know that. Now
- 20:41what we don't do as trades is we don't sit there and go. I
- 20:42must fill in my CPD learning log. And the trouble is is post Grenfell,
- 20:47we've now become and it is slowly creeping its way in having to declare
- 20:52your your continuous learning so that you can at least say, look, I'm
- 20:55a tradesman. I'm good at what I'm doing, but I also keep up
- 20:56with all the different changes. I do my training, I do my on
- 21:00site learning. I keep in touch with what's going on the industry so I
- 21:03don't do something wrong. That's a journey that five years ago, if you'd
- 21:07have said CPD, I remember doing podcasts five years ago talking about CPD and
- 21:11it was just like, well's that then. Now everyone in the industry knows
- 21:15what CBD is, So imagine what I'll be in five years, ten years,
- 21:18fifteen years. But if you want the knowledge, just go away and
- 21:22read. Just literally just go away and read. Pick up a book,
- 21:26pick up a standard and read it. There's no secret formula your brain will
- 21:30work differently. And I found using a highlight a pen to highlight the words
- 21:34that a trademan would want to use is the way of learning standard. So
- 21:38you can learn a three hundred paid standard just by highlighting the words that you
- 21:42might find useful on site. And that's how I learned most of the standards
- 21:45that I know. I mean, just going fractionally off pissed here. We
- 21:51were just talking in earlier in the last link about the shortage of apprentices and
- 21:56how that's going to be a real issue. I think in years, I
- 22:00think it will be such a mad issue. It had an ending issue as
- 22:03well, wasn't it. With it? There is a funding issue, and
- 22:06I had to get a crown completely after there is a point of this.
- 22:10I had to get a crown fitted. I know, my producers like,
- 22:11what's he doing. He's going off pissed. There's a point I had to
- 22:15get a crown fitted. You know people now go to Turkey to get they
- 22:18get this perfect white smile. Well they do it basically by grinding down every
- 22:22tooth and giving you a crown. That's that's basically how they do it.
- 22:25So all of your teeth they literally just grind all of them down to stumps.
- 22:29You basically get a mouthful of crowns. That is how they give you
- 22:32this perfect white smile. You just get a mouthful of crowns. And I
- 22:34was in the dentist I had one crown fitted and this guy was like,
- 22:37because I asked him, I said, how does that make any sense?
- 22:41People are just literally they're just grinding all of their teeth away to get them.
- 22:45Yeah, and he said it literally in ten years, he said,
- 22:48this would be an absolutely cataclysmic scale of people all with basically knackered crowns or
- 22:56wanting them taken out. And then of course they can't. They've got them
- 22:57for life. Now that's it. So yeah, just when you said apprentice
- 23:02isn't about ten years, I was saying about ten years. That's just a
- 23:03little story just came down. Yeah. I think in every generation, the
- 23:10next one, they see more things. But I think there is a very
- 23:12serious industry discussion needs to be had about how do we deliver the infrastructure works
- 23:18and maintain the existing infrastructure. And yes, I know there's this whole let's
- 23:23introduce new technology to make us greener and more sustainable, get it. But
- 23:27you need to have the people skilled installing it, yeah, and maintaining it
- 23:32and replacing it. And at the moment I find that there's so much old
- 23:34knowledge. A lot of the apprentices I speak to, they'll send me a
- 23:38picture of a DNO intake and I'll be able to tell them exactly what it
- 23:41is, what year it was made in, and they're not being taught this
- 23:44in college. So I have very serious concerns over what the City and Guild
- 23:49Syllabuses is choosing to teach youngsters, because it's a perfect example. When I
- 23:53went to college first year of college, it was two and a half days
- 23:56a week. Now it's one day a week for your first year. So
- 24:00we are we have effectively reduced the learning time over those three years of college
- 24:04by two thirds. So they're not getting the same education that we got.
- 24:10And if there's not enough experienced people on site, they're not getting the apprenticeships
- 24:14that we got. But they're still there mitigating it by teaching them health and
- 24:17safety. That that doesn't give you people, Yeah, it doesn't give but
- 24:22it gives you short terms. Am. It doesn't give you people who can
- 24:26put but it's solving the problem when you have an electrician on site, you
- 24:30expect them or hope that they will be able to. I know there are
- 24:33clients whill go. I've got a sparky so he can do everything for me.
- 24:36If I get a new electrician, I want to go and meet him
- 24:37and talk to him and say, how can we solve this together? Are
- 24:41you okay and doing the work? That sort of thing. Try and show
- 24:42them you care that they'll get all the materials and time they need. It's
- 24:47not happening in the rest of the world. It's just your sparks. Can't
- 24:49you do it? I'll I'll just mug you off and get someone else in.
- 24:52And then you get these clients that just rotate electrical contractors like mad and
- 24:56that does happen out there. You've seen it, I most certainly have.
- 25:00All Right, well, look, let's come back to wrap this up before
- 25:03trevn Rich takeover from four pm here on fixed radio, the Bilser's station,
- 25:10The Electrical Show on Fixed Radio, and that Good People is about it.
- 25:14For today's Electrical Show, we've talked about the journey from being an apprentice to
- 25:18a master of the craft. Now, Paul, just quickly before we end,
- 25:22what kind of skills, traits and experience. Would you expect an accomplished
- 25:29electrician to have What are we looking at? Oh, this is a controversial
- 25:34one. I think the necessary skills relevant to the task is probably the generic
- 25:41answer. But for me, I need to see what's the word a glint
- 25:47in ira. I need to see confidence And it sounds mental, but you
- 25:52can have confidence in knowing what to do and also have confidence in knowing what
- 25:55to do. But for me, an electrician should be able to effectively electing
- 26:00installation, erected installation, inspect it, test it, certify it, hand
- 26:03it over and explain it to the next bloke. That's how I was taught.
- 26:07And if you can do that, fine, And it's okay to genuinely
- 26:11say not everybody knows everything. We're always learning. Every time I have to
- 26:15install saving in my house or somewhere else, I'm having to go. I
- 26:18didn't know that. That's aing new And look at the trade shows now,
- 26:22you know, Alex, You go down to one limb trade shows and there's
- 26:26tons of new products on the market. I cannot keep up. I just
- 26:30can't. It's impossible. But there's lots more products trying to make it easier
- 26:33for us and quicker. But for me, the fundamental bread and butter skills
- 26:37is, you know, can you bend, can you select and size a
- 26:41cable? Can you protect it? Can you explain it to someone, what's
- 26:44basic and additional protection? That sort of stuff. We actually we're bending pieber
- 26:48mean, it's a cheap way of doing it, but it's really good.
- 26:49We were bending conduit on a former the other day and normally, I mean
- 26:55I've always done it. Is if you're trying to pull a ninety or something,
- 26:57you'll you'll pull it upwards and then you sort of get it roughly what
- 27:00you think it is. Have a look at you. Yeah, take it
- 27:03out the former and he's a smidge more, put it back in, click
- 27:06it a bit more, and he had the digital Yeah. Jack, he's
- 27:11almost literally's an apprentice, be virtually out of his time now as a spark
- 27:14and he literally he had its magnetic angle finder and he just put it on
- 27:18the consu it, pulled it up, got it to ninety bang, took
- 27:21it straight out and it was perfect. And I was like, I looked
- 27:22at it. I was like, that's a really clever, time saving way
- 27:26of doing it. And to be fair to him, it was a better
- 27:29method. All right, I was doing it bye, but it actually took
- 27:32me longer. He got it right first time. See, that's a great
- 27:34tool. But in my day it was a set square, so you just
- 27:37held up a fixed ninety degree piece and that was it. But yeah,
- 27:41I've seen that tool. They're phenomenal. I think Amazon stuff really so it's
- 27:45like literally seventeen twenty quid. They're brilliant. Yeah I cannot buy one.
- 27:48Nope, well worth it. Areas of outstanding beauty is what I've got on
- 27:52my crib sheet or AOB anything else we'd like to discuss standing beauty. I
- 27:59saw on the crib sheet and the first time I saw it because that's area
- 28:02of outs down in beauty. But yeah, AOB any other business. Not
- 28:06really for me to want to say, well, I actually know the I
- 28:08think because there's so many different people who listen to this in different journeys.
- 28:12The only thing I can say to the apprentices is enjoy it as mad as
- 28:18that sounds, because there will be some of them going through hell. Ye,
- 28:19don't be afraid to ask for help. Social media's got some great people
- 28:23helping apprentices on it. Yeah, just don't be afraid to ask questions and
- 28:27to be honest with you know you're bloody worth, but know when you're being
- 28:30bullied and treated really badly. And and I know it's really hard because some
- 28:36of the colleges offersited this year have absolutely broke my heart speaking to some of
- 28:38the guys because I'm finding I'm going to colleges now and there are more and
- 28:42more people who aren't being given a chance. So my final thought is to
- 28:48the electrical contractors, give apprentices a chance. There are industry's future. You
- 28:52ain't winning work, you ain't growing about them. Perfectly well said. I
- 28:55couldn't agree more. You can hear the show again from ten o'clock right here
- 28:59on fixed rates. If you missed any of it, You can also download
- 29:02the show as a podcast. You can find links to the podcast, news
- 29:06and competitions by signing up to the Electrical Show newsletter. If you want to
- 29:11sign up, which of course you do, head to fix Radio dot co
- 29:14dot uk, where you'll find the links on the homepage.