Apprentice Control Systems Project Engineer
-
What will the apprenticeship involve?
The apprenticeship is delivered by Charter Tech in partnership with Bournemouth and Poole College. You will achieve a BEng (Hons) in Engineering (Electronic Design) as well as other qualifications, with no study fees and therefore no student debt. In fact, you would be “earning while learning”.
Much of your “on-the-job” training will be undertaken at Charter Tech’s offices in Wimborne, and occasionally at our client’s sites whilst engaged in system commissioning work. You will initially “work shadow” one of our engineers undertaking several tasks and will progress to performing those tasks on your own.
Over the course of the apprenticeship, the various tasks and training will include:
- Health and Safety in the workplace and working on site
- Working in the framework of our company management systems
- Safe use of hand tools for panel building and wiring
- Safe use of multi-meters and other test equipment
- Commercial awareness
- Dealing with customers from both a technical and commercial perspective
- Project estimating and sales
- Project management, including management of vendors
- Interpretation of customer requirements (e.g. technical review of industry standards, customer’s specifications, Piping & Instrument Diagrams etc.)
- Production of engineering drawings using AutoCAD
- Production of other engineering documents (e.g. Specifications, Manuals etc.)
- Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) configuration and programming
- Human Machine Interface (HMI) configuration
- Complete system integration
- Application software debug and system testing
- System installation and commissioning
- System operation and maintenance
Charter Tech’s management team are also former apprentices. Therefore, as a company we understand the challenges and benefits of becoming an apprentice. Your journey will not be an easy one, but it will be worthwhile. You can be assured that our staff will be on hand to guide and assist you in your aspiration to become one of our next generation Control Systems Project Engineers, but it will be up to you to put in the hard work to achieve this goal.
Our apprenticeship entry requirements
This apprenticeship will be challenging and so there are some criteria that we would expect you to meet, so that you are best prepared for success.
Qualifications
For the level 4 HNC course, candidates will typically have 32 UCAS points, one A Level at grade C/4+ in a relevant subject (Mathematics and English) or equivalent AVCE or national diploma/certificate. In addition to this, we would like our candidates to have strong grades in GCSE English, Mathematics and either Combined Science or Physics. This is because the preparation of technical documentation requires a good grasp of English and Mathematics, whilst a qualification in Physics demonstrates an understanding of the basic engineering principles underpinning much of our work. Therefore, candidates must have relevant A Levels or equivalent qualifications in subjects like mathematics, further mathematics, physics, chemistry, design technology or similar.
Skills
Apprentices will learn many new skills whilst in training, however, we would expect candidates are already confident users of general office software like Microsoft Word / Excel / PowerPoint etc. We would also expect them to possess a UK driving licence by the completion of the apprenticeship. It would also be beneficial if candidates are able to approach problems in a logical and analytical way, as this will become a fundamental skill on which a lot of other skills will be based. An understanding of basic programming techniques would be desirable, but not essential.
Personal Qualities
- Flexibility to work independently or as part of a team
- Excellent time management skills
- An attention to detail
- A professional outlook with an active interest in their own professional development