BEng Applied Professional Engineering

My role as a Field Service Representative – Apprentice includes taking part in the commissioning/installation, maintenance and repair of Uninterruptible Power systems (UPSs). This includes attending customer sites across the country to carry out diagnostic tests to check the health and correct functioning of secure power installations. Recently I have been progressing towards my role as a fully-fledged FSR by trying to lead jobs where possible on site and help produce the reports and paperwork that is sent to the customers.

In what ways has the course contributed to your professional development?

The course has taught me modules such as management and quality assurance, a specific continual professional development module and the admin tracking side of the apprenticeship to stay on top of managing KSBs and tracking my development of knowledge.

What motivated you to pursue a degree apprenticeship rather than a traditional University degree?

I had been working since around the age of 16 so had a good balance for work and study as it was which helped as I wanted to continue this instead of reverting back to full time education.

The fact that I could get paid, get hands on learning experience and also have a funded degree all at the same time made this route almost a no brainer for myself and definitely was the way to go in my circumstances.

What aspects of your degree apprenticeship have you found most rewarding?

I like being able to have the workplace interaction with all of my team being very experienced in the industry and so are very welcoming and happy to teach me what they know. This is also very rewarding being at the point now that I have worked long enough to stop shadowing and start getting hands on myself to show what I have learned.

How do you balance your academic studies with your professional responsibilities?

Work is very flexible in the fact that if I need extra time to study they are more than happy to give me these. I have times where a week can be almost entirely Uni focused with lectures and assignments but then I can have a solid block in the workplace to carry out my job role.

This means that I can have time in the evenings and weekends to my personal life and still manage to get my work and study completed. Setting reminders to make sure assignments are progressing and evidence logs are regularly updated also helps me to not forget.

If you had to summarise your course and experience in three words, what would they be and why?

Applied, Challenging and Rewarding.

Applied as you are constantly taking on the theory from lectures and the workplace and applying it in a real scenario when working on UPSs and intricate power systems in the field.

Challenging as it is a real challenge to balance a degree, full time job and your own social life outside these with strict deadlines for assignments but also timesheets, expenses and customer work reports.

Rewarding as you are building hands on expertise that you have paired with your learning to be able to see the impact in real time of my work especially due to the large data-centre application that has links to the social media and online platforms we use daily