Welcome to Plug in 2 engineering

Transcript

The electricity gets transformed down to 11,000 volts in an 11,000 volts substation. That's where you'd find me. I'd be working now on either side of the network. 11,000 volts or the other side of the transformer on the same voltage that your homes are running off.

I enjoy being a Fitter because it's a challenge, something different happens every day, whether it be a fault, installing new gear or ripping out old substations from redundant factories. I work alongside other engineers sometimes along with another Fitter, normally working in teams of two. Sometimes three if there's an apprentice with us. Once you're getting the safety documents you've got to liaise with engineers, control officers but also you're working with craftsmen, Linespeople or Jointers, say when they're terminating cables or are overhead.

I wanted to be a Fitter because when I first started and came to have a look at the job I found that most interesting that it was a lot of very close up hard work and you had to be very precise and that's where I found the challenge at the time and I think I've made the right choice.

A circuit breaker makes or breaks a circuit, the type of task I might do is circuit breaking maintenance. This includes stripping down the breaker and inspecting all the contacts inside and outside of it, doing certain tests on it including the slow close test which is just to check that all the contacts make contact properly.

It took me four years to train, and over that time I have qualified as an NVQ level 3, I've also done key skills courses at college and also a City and Guilds 2322. Maths and physics really helped me - I mean you get all about ohms law and circuits and how they work and series and how they work in parallel, and how everything fits together and that work. Maths helped because a lot of my jobs are about numbers, when you're setting up time, trip schemes, it's all about using seconds and multiplying and using different formula. English helps through school because without that I wouldn't have the knowledge - I wouldn't be able to do the reading and the background to understand my job correctly. There's a lot of college involved and you have to get through that to pass.

For this job, you need to have good time keeping, commitment, you need to keep your patience - a lot of times, things won't go right first time when solving problems, working on faults, you have to dig in and really work out. You can be out the house at all hours and when you're there, cold and wet sometimes, it's not the most appealing but you've got to get people back on supply and that's important. I mean in the winter months when people are off supply they've got no heating, they've got no hot water... they're really struggling.

And for us, we've got to get them back on supply that might mean re rooting the network, by putting iv fuses here, and setting links in over there, it's all rebuilding the network around that fault, and then we've got to find the fault and fix it.

Daily what you'll find in circuit breakers is insulating oil, it stops an arc when the contacts made at a switch with 11,000 volts, it produces quite a flash, and this oil extinguishes this flash.

When I get a call out, the most important thing is keeping everybody safe, especially the public, myself, colleagues - you get various challenges throughout the job, it could be a simple job where something out of the blue has sort of unusually gone wrong and it just bugs you and bugs you and bugs you, and then you finally crack it and it brings a massive smile to your face.

Through being a Fitter, I've learnt a lot, it's matured me - not only as a person - but in everything like teamwork, commitment, motivation, everything about my life has changed and it's really improved me for a better person.