Hello and welcome to the 9th installment of my Plumbing and Heating blog.
It feels as though it’s been ages since I last wrote one of these, I guess it’s because so much has changed between now and my last installment. I’ve been back at college for a little over a month now and am well on my way to achieving Level 2 – I have also been moved to a different site, along with the team that was working on Wood Street.
College is going well, and I feel a lot more confident and comfortable now that I’m in my second year. I have recently passed the Site Fabrication/Preparation exam in my theory; leaving me with only three exams left to take – Sanitation (which I’m currently revising for), Central Heating, and Rainwater/Drainage. We are also moving at a good pace with the completion of our practical folder; lately we have moved onto maintenance tasks, which are paramount for us to pass the maintenance fault-finding exam; and will also help with the final exam of fitting a bathroom suite. My college group is still very much a team; with people helping each other with bits of work that some do on site day in, day out, whereas others have never touched it in their lives. My cousin also just started a plumbing apprenticeship, so it’s nice to have even more friendly faces around.
Now, the site I was on at Wood Street is a mere baby compared to the new job I’m on, it’s right on the Thames; located at Embankment – The Adelphi House.
The building is massive, and we are working on the renovation of levels one to 10 (Also including the Basement/Car Park).
Most floors are your typical office layout, although level one/ground will include a restaurant and possibly some retail. Working on a job this size requires a lot of communication and teamwork – also it’s not as simple as Wood Street was; as there is so much existing pipework which must be stripped out and replaced, e.g. six inch cast iron riser pipework (NOT FUN). Some jobs can only be done out of normal working hours, because the floors above are still occupied by the tenants (office workers) – these types of tasks include; connecting a temporary waste pipe onto the existing waste pipe for the toilets on the occupied floors.
I can already tell that I am going to learn a lot from this site, because the work is so varied and it really is all hands on deck. It will be a great job for completing my on-site portfolio (which I will be working on a lot this year) because there are loads of domestic elements – i.e. many toilet blocks etc.
It feels good that we’ve had that catch up…
Thanks for stopping by, See you on number 10.
Mitchell.
[author image=”https://www.installeronline.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/MITCHELROBERTS.jpg” ]Mitchell Brown was recruited as a JTL apprentice in late summer of 2013. He celebrated his 17th birthday in October. He is employed by Designer Group, which has its UK headquarters in Shepherd’s Bush, London. One day each week is spent at Barking & Dagenham College in Romford as part of his striving to first achieve a Level 2 Plumbing qualification before moving forward to Level 3. Mitchell expects the process to last for four years. A former student of West Hatch High School in Chigwell, he achieved good GCSE grades and thought long and hard about whether to go forward to A levels, before deciding to accept the opportunity of a JTL apprenticeship. [/author]
