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I’m Rob.

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I currently work at M&S Castle Donington,

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and I’m a cranes asset manager.

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You look after the maintenance, scheduling,

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and planning of the cranes themselves.

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Things go around in boxes, they arrive at

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the crane, the crane picks them up and stores

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them away, all without human interaction.

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The day-to-day is come in and understand what

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has happened over the last 24 hours, essentially.

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Number one priority is to check the locks.

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So that is a location that has, for whatever reason,

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faulted out and we can’t get our stock that’s

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in that location out through use of the crane.

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Second is, there’s a team that I

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manage as well, so that’s going to them.

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Any planned work or emergent problems,

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that we speak with them and understand

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what our next move is during the day.

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And if any health and safeties have

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arised over the last 24 hours as well.

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Yeah, typical kid.

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Doesn’t wanna sit in a classroom,

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just wants to do PE essentially every day.

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Tech and stuff like that where you’re

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using your hands, again, really enjoyed that.

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But the sit down, listening to someone talk,

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never really enjoyed that unfortunately.

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Maths was the biggest one where, when I went into

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an engineering background, everything’s maths.

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Maths is used everywhere and if you’re

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good at maths, maths can make your job very easy.

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Which I learned the hard way by doing

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a lot of maths after I left school.

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Seeing things on paper obviously doesn’t really

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make any sense, but when there’s an actual

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physical problem in front of you that needs

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you to use maths, trigonometry being one of them,

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it does help you quite considerably, yeah.

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The other one being science and obviously physics.

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Again, engineering is all based around physics.

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Again, with chemistry as well, it’s all things

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that you have learned at GCSE that

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you will relate back to in this situation.

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you will relate back to in this situation.

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Left school with my GCSEs,

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went to a college to do public service.

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My first job after I’d left college,

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I went into building camper vans for my dad’s mate.

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But essentially because I was so more

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hands-on than anything else, they loved it.

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It was all good and I made camper vans

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for two years essentially.

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Just working on a production line, putting

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bits together, until it got to the end.

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What I found was though,

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you kind of hit the ceiling with it quite

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quick in how you then could progress with it.

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Again, there’s no qualifications in there.

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Left there, got this apprenticeship.

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The apprenticeship works, you have a

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first two years, it was with Toyota.

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So you’re with them for two years essentially

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just learning all the basics.

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Going lesson by lesson, with a bit of placement here,

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just to understand the site essentially.

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After that, you drop straight into the

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deep end and you’re with the shifts here,

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and it’s going round doing their everyday job,

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but doing an NVQ on the side of that where

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some of the jobs you’ll do, you’ll have them

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written up or you’ll have someone come and

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assess you just to check your competency in that.

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A lot more of that essentially for another

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two years and then you get your qualification and

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then you’re free to do what you want, I suppose.

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You’re here physically doing a job that

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someone’s gonna overlook what you’re doing.

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Where I think in the school setting, it’s more,

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this is the theory of how you would do that job.

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And because you haven’t got anything to apply with

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your hands and see how things actually physically work,

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it’s just completely different, and I think

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it’s to do with how people learn essentially.

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So the qualification itself is a

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multi-skilled mechatronics engineer,

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so you’ve got a background

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in pneumatics, electrical and mechanical.

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I finished my apprenticeship.

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I was then a maintenance engineer as

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part of a team, looking after the

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same cranes that I’m looking after now.

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After doing that for a couple of years,

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I’ve now for the last year and a half stepped into

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the management role of the same cranes, so looking

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after the people I used to work with essentially.

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Before I started the apprenticeship, the biggest

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off-put for me was I’m dyslexic, and sitting in

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a classroom, you don’t wanna be doing any of that.

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I got diagnosed in year seven.

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It was quite tricky, to be honest.

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Problem with schools, to do well there

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you’ve gotta fit into a certain box.

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Not saying that I didn’t do well,

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it’s just that I think I was just

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teetering on the other side of that box.

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Once you leave school, the box gets

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infinitely big and you can fit in

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wherever you need to fit in essentially.