Engineer to Electrician?

[dazedandconfused]

Hi all,

I have my Electrical & Electronic BEng, EngTech and I'm 25.

From my placement year and from my first job after graduating, I've come to realise that a desk job is not for me. I'll spare you all the details but I was quite unhappy in my last job and became disillusioned with engineering. My other main passion is the outdoors, I really enjoy hiking, camping, climbing etc as well as teaching people outdoors. I now have a couple of jobs within the outdoor industry which I find much more fulfilling, but a part of me still misses the technical challenge that interested me in engineering in the first place. And from meeting other instructors I've come to realise it's quite common for people to split their time between working outdoors and another profession, trades being quite popular (carpenter, landscaper etc), in order to make a decent living.

Which leads me to my current position. What draws me towards being an electrician is the practical nature of the work (getting to use my hands / tools), the variety of working in different locations and eventually the prospect of working for myself and the flexibility this could offer. The obvious downsides like the physical wear and hazardous environments don't bother me for now, but when they inevitably do I hope that the experience gained by then would allow me to transition into something less strenuous. 

Despite my qualifications I think I would still have to start with the Level 2 & 3 Diploma courses and then work as an electricians mate / apprentice for a few years before getting the NVQ Level 3. Unless anyone can advise if there's a way to streamline this?

Could anyone offer any advice as to whether this plan makes any sense? I'm quite a practical person and I enjoy DIY projects, working on motorbikes, cars etc and working outside doesn't bother me. So hopefully I wouldn't be totally useless starting as an apprentice and I recognise there would be a huge amount of skills to learn that my degree wouldn't help with. 

Cheers

 

[Evans Electric]

We get a lot of posts on this subject , I don't know if you can trawl back to them .   

I think the biggest difficulty  is to do the year,s  work with a contractor  to attain this NVQ thing   .

I'd say there were no mature  apprenticeships as such , I think the only route is attaining a Trainee or Mate's card  and working your way up  doing relevant courses at night school .      Personally I think its quite difficult to become an electrician .   ( Beware of bogus courses that do not apply  but cost much money )   (( And a 6 week  so called Part P course  does not qualify  an  electrician )) 

Apprenticeships  for school leavers are  hard to come by  .

Other members are more up to date with qualifications  if you wait for them to log in .       Sparks of my age , and the really ancient ones like Kerch  who  was apprentice with Faraday Electrical Ltd  only   needed to do one C&G  to qualify as an electrician   , now there  seems to about 300  different courses pass  (  The name of that game  is called  Bums on seats in the colleges)   

Any good at car mechanics  ?    

 

[binky]

there's no streamline process to gaining the experience. You won't struggle with the qualifications as such.

I retrained after getting fed up with engineering as well, but in my case it was after 20 years. If you are good with IT based gadgets it may well be worth going down a slighty different route such as CCTV, most of which is IT based these days, along with stuff like home automation. Basic electrics doesn't pay as much as people think, it's better to have a technical speciality. MIne was Solar Panels, but the goverment destroyed that!  

Biggest difference between your degree course and electrics is getting your head around the fact it's power rather than control - which is what my training was in.  I got the short courses out of the way for regs and part p, then worked with afriend to learn house bashing, and spent a lot of time staring at electrics in pubs / shops, /  pictures on websites and reading trade magazines and wholesaler catalogues. I built up experince by doing jobs around the house and for friends and neighbours before letting lose on the general public. I was lucky in that I had completed a 4 year apprenticeship and spent a few years making test equipment and working in machine shops, so using tools was not an isssue for me.

 

[Tony S]

What sort of an electrician do you want to be?

Domestic you’ll be wasting your talents.

Industrial will give you something to tax the grey matter. There’s a heap of **** on your shoulders and lots of decisions to be made, some costing £xxxk per hour if you get it wrong.

 

[dazedandconfused]

We get a lot of posts on this subject , I don't know if you can trawl back to them .   

I think the biggest difficulty  is to do the year,s  work with a contractor  to attain this NVQ thing   .

I'd say there were no mature  apprenticeships as such , I think the only route is attaining a Trainee or Mate's card  and working your way up  doing relevant courses at night school .      Personally I think its quite difficult to become an electrician .   ( Beware of bogus courses that do not apply  but cost much money )   (( And a 6 week  so called Part P course  does not qualify  an  electrician )) 

Apprenticeships  for school leavers are  hard to come by  .

Other members are more up to date with qualifications  if you wait for them to log in .       Sparks of my age , and the really ancient ones like Kerch  who  was apprentice with Faraday Electrical Ltd  only   needed to do one C&G  to qualify as an electrician   , now there  seems to about 300  different courses pass  (  The name of that game  is called  Bums on seats in the colleges)   

Any good at car mechanics  ?    

Thanks for the reality check on finding apprenticeships as a "mature" student. And having read around a bit I now think the last thing I'm going to do is fork out for one of these intensive courses! I've done a few odd jobs on cars and can figure most things out with a Haynes manual / youtube but I'm certainly no professional. Maybe auto electrician might suit me though...

If you are good with IT based gadgets it may well be worth going down a slighty different route such as CCTV, most of which is IT based these days, along with stuff like home automation. Basic electrics doesn't pay as much as people think, it's better to have a technical speciality. MIne was Solar Panels, but the goverment destroyed that! 

Thanks for sharing a little about your path, it's really interesting for me to see what others have gone through. I was actually already considering home automation etc, I imagine a lot of this would be purely down to personal experience and experience with the products. But I suppose you would still need to have some of the qualifications that a fully qualified electrician has? Not sure what you would need to ensure everything is up to regs

What sort of an electrician do you want to be?

Domestic you’ll be wasting your talents.

Industrial will give you something to tax the grey matter. There’s a heap of **** on your shoulders and lots of decisions to be made, some costing £xxxk per hour if you get it wrong.

Unless I did go industrial as binky mentioned it would probably make more sense to specialise on something - I was already thinking about home automation etc.

 

[binky]

all you need is basic electical skills for CCTV or Home Automation gear. The only time Home Automation gets complicated is if a customer with a new buikd project decides to wire the whoe house for a HA system - lots of cabling!! For CCTV, some knowledge of lamp posts is a good idea  -  more for commercial stuff.  A knowledge of WiFi bridges is more important.