Working across large areas of the North and Midlands requires a substantial team of plumbing and heating engineers and we’re always looking out for qualified, experienced people to join us. However, we also appreciate that there are great benefits to being able to spot and nurture talent at the start of people’s career.
We have, therefore, joined up with Brookhouse Gas Training to provide placements to their trainees, which form part of their assessment. A compulsory part of their course, the purpose of the placement is to give them practical, on-the-job experience and enable them to create a gas portfolio that demonstrates their skills across all key areas.
Each trainee is required to complete a minimum of 40 days on site. They must cover a range of tasks covering gas safety, checks and tests, part replacement/installation, and fault diagnosis and resolution. Reports must be completed and filed on the work they complete.
Performance during the placement determines their suitability to sit their gas exams, which is the final element before qualification.
The placement programme with Plumbcare.com is designed as follows:
Not all plumbing and heating firms will accommodate trainees in this way as it can slow engineers down and create extra work to ensure they’re getting the full range of experience needed. We have chosen to collaborate with Brookhouse because we know how important it is to bring new talent into the industry. There is a significant shortage of qualified engineers so it’s really important to keep bringing new talent through and you can’t maintain a workforce of qualified, experienced engineers if you don’t encourage and support people to train and embark on a technical career path in the early stages.
It also allows our engineers to develop their mentoring skills. We have a number of tech engineers whose job it is to offer technical support to other members of the team. However, due to the close way in which our team works, any engineer can be called upon to lend their professional opinion, create a solution, or get to the bottom of a technical issue so being able to explain things clearly and develop people is a really valuable skillset to have whether it’s for moving up to a tech engineer role or just helping out their colleagues.
Finally, it gives us the chance to spot talent and retain it within the Plumbcare.com family. There is a great advantage to us to take newly qualified engineers on and develop them specifically on the kinds of jobs that we do: reactive emergency plumbing and heating, servicing and maintenance, and boiler installations. We envisage offering employment to many of the trainees that show potential during their placements with us.
Want to meet the trainees that have undertaken their placements with us so far? See our trainee case studies.
Complete the form below and one of the Plumbcare.com team will get back to you as soon as possible.
