I wish you the best of luck, it’s a great road to go down. The company I served my time with didn’t assign you to a trade for the first year, you would do fitting, machining, welding and electrical. It was decided I was to go down the electrical road and that should have been the end of the metal bashing.
Once out of my time I joined one of the shift maintenance teams. Two teams on the works per shift consisting of 2 electricians, 2 fitters, 1 welder and 1 fitters mate. We were petty autonomous as a team, there being no one “in charge” out of normal day time hours. We were left alone to our own devices so long as product flowed out of the door.
With any breakdown it would be all hands to the pumps (sometimes literally) to get things running again. So from starting as segregated trade groups, we were put in a skills food blender. If we could we stuck to our trades but a lot of the time it was whoever was nearest got the job.
Over time with cost cutting the teams dwindled down to just one team with an electrician and a fitter. We had to help each other and learn from each other.
I moved to another company with pretty much the same set up but not as well organised, we had to be pretty inventive with some of our fixes. We had a full machine shop but by the time I arrived on the scene all the machinists had retired / wandered off not to be replaced. It was like dropping me in to an Aladdin’s cave full of big boys toys. The company had a pretty laid back attitude, if you felt comfortable doing something then their way was to let you get on with it.
I learnt PLC programming by flying by the seat of my pants which put the design department’s nose out of joint some what. Motor repairs had all been farmed out to contract, I got all but rewinds brought back in house. Machining again was brought back. Things still had to go out as our main job was plant breakdowns and maintenance, we just got snowed under.
One endearing memory was a new engineering manager moving to our site and being introduced to our “team”, a fitter and me!
“So let me get this right, you’re the electrician and he’s the fitter?” “Why is he fitting a contactor and while you’re cutting a key way?”
He got a bit confused!
One of our little projects was to build and install a 5 tonne hoist, all done in house. The manager’s head swelled to about three times it normal bloated size when all the proof testing certificates came through.
It’s a great way to go if you can just get your foot in the door first. With me it was all lucky accidents along the way. Nothing was planned, it just happened!
