RSSClarifying Electrical Qualifications – An Introduction
Feb 09
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The fact is that a career within the electrical sphere is a frequent alternative for many people. Although often assigned to as ‘Electro-Mechanical Engineering”, we will simply refer to this as the Electrical Industry. In addition, we will stay with the UK market and especially items relating to the domestic and commercial sectors rather than global issues. Because of the vast number of options available for a career within the electrical industry, we’ll start by concentrating on the main topics, and come back to the ‘add-ons’ later.
On consideration, we observe two forms of access into the electrical market. Whilst many candidates opt to join later on in their life, there still exists the more traditional route of the apprenticeship. Throughout this document we will simply refer to two types of people the ‘Junior’ and the ‘Mature’ entrants.
Mature students, or entrants, often train so that they can become self-employed and work on their own projects without having to pay wages to external electricians. However, people who join as junior entrants like the fact that they can join a recognised firm to pick up the bulk of their practical and work based skills. Upon leaving school many apprenticeships provide a fast learning curve for young adults looking to boost their auxiliary skills.
The different ways into electrical work have two distinct types of training: Junior Entrants are heavily linked with NVQ’s (or the Scottish equivalent – SVQ’s.) Whilst the core syllabus is relatively similar to non-NVQ commercial training, there is a particular requirement to attain the actual NVQ qualifications as part of the overall training program. This requires being in a directly-related work program or apprenticeship of some type, so as to meet the testing and course-work requirements.
Many mature students gain entry into the market without the NVQ element, and simply choose the most commercially practical route to self employed work. Instead most of them aim for the techniques that will get them up and running as quickly as possible and give them the best return against the cost to train in the first place. Whilst this may seem to reduce the overall qualification set, this meets the trade requirements for the areas involved, and thus provides a quicker and more direct commercial route to the market.
So we have two defined routes laid out – one being for general employment and the other centred on self-employment. Obviously, with self-employment, there is the added issue of whether the Entrant is part-time (working around another job) or full-time; we will concentrate on full-time. Income levels are also dictated by experience and knowledge gained – usually proven via an accredited proficiency or certification level.
The basic salary for Junior Entrants tends to start around the 12-15k mark, but rises regularly to around 30k with the right level of experience. Conversely, the UK newspapers often report experienced mature electricians can expect an income of anything up to 70.000. It should be remembered however that a self employed person must often bear additional costs for items such as vehicles, tools and clothing. Earmarked within this is the need to cover additional expenses such as accountancy or insurance. However, the driving force remains the UK skills shortage and this means that there’s a load of work available. Without a doubt, the market would allow for some people to work a full seven days a week. It should be noted that figures of 70-100k p.a. advertised are not necessarily easy to come by and would require some long working hours to obtain them.
To be fair, most Junior and Mature electricians experience very different working hours to each other. For a ‘Junior Entrant’, most work is on a simple working week basis. The Mature market is however often reliant as to when their client base is available, especially in the domestic sector. Again, this varies considerably, and many self-employed electricians make the mainstay of their income from office and small business installation, testing and inspection, which is Mon-Fri 9-5pm.
If a Junior Electrician chooses an electrical career, then the main business actions of their company often dictate the type of expertise that they gain. Alternatively, the mature entrant can gain other training outside of their chosen field, such as gas and plumbing work. This gives them the chance to complete work for domestic clients without having to sub contract jobs out every time.
One new, fast growing area – one that invokes a wide array of skills sets and is new to the industry overall – is that of the ‘Green Engineer’. Looking together to the UK and the EEC this activity could be of benefit to both Junior and Mature Entrants, providing new growth and opportunities to both disciplines.
(C) 2009 – S. Edwards. Browse around www.RetrainingCourses.co.uk/orecourse.html or 2392 Courses.
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