Crane Asset Manager
Marks and Spencer

00:00:05:10 – 00:00:06:05

I’m Rob.

00:00:06:05 – 00:00:08:12

I currently work at M&S Castle Donington,

00:00:08:12 – 00:00:13:13

and I’m a cranes asset manager.

00:00:13:15 – 00:00:15:21

You look after the maintenance, scheduling,

00:00:15:21 – 00:00:18:13

and planning of the cranes themselves.

00:00:18:13 – 00:00:20:10

Things go around in boxes, they arrive at

00:00:20:10 – 00:00:22:18

the crane, the crane picks them up and stores

00:00:22:18 – 00:00:25:20

them away, all without human interaction.

00:00:25:20 – 00:00:28:10

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

00:00:28:10 – 00:00:31:02

has happened over the last 24 hours, essentially.

00:00:31:02 – 00:00:33:20

Number one priority is to check the locks.

00:00:33:20 – 00:00:37:01

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

00:00:37:01 – 00:00:39:10

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

00:00:39:10 – 00:00:41:12

in that location out through use of the crane.

00:00:41:12 – 00:00:43:05

Second is, there’s a team that I

00:00:43:05 – 00:00:44:20

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

00:00:44:20 – 00:00:46:13

Any planned work or emergent problems,

00:00:46:13 – 00:00:48:04

that we speak with them and understand

00:00:48:04 – 00:00:50:02

what our next move is during the day.

00:00:50:02 – 00:00:51:23

And if any health and safeties have

00:00:51:23 – 00:00:57:02

arised over the last 24 hours as well.

00:00:57:04 – 00:00:57:22

Yeah, typical kid.

00:00:57:22 – 00:00:59:12

Doesn’t wanna sit in a classroom,

00:00:59:12 – 00:01:02:02

just wants to do PE essentially every day.

00:01:02:02 – 00:01:03:20

Tech and stuff like that where you’re

00:01:03:20 – 00:01:06:02

using your hands, again, really enjoyed that.

00:01:06:02 – 00:01:08:17

But the sit down, listening to someone talk,

00:01:08:17 – 00:01:10:11

never really enjoyed that unfortunately.

00:01:10:11 – 00:01:12:06

Maths was the biggest one where, when I went into

00:01:12:06 – 00:01:14:17

an engineering background, everything’s maths.

00:01:14:17 – 00:01:16:02

Maths is used everywhere and if you’re

00:01:16:02 – 00:01:18:18

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

00:01:18:18 – 00:01:20:21

Which I learned the hard way by doing

00:01:20:21 – 00:01:22:05

a lot of maths after I left school.

00:01:22:05 – 00:01:24:03

Seeing things on paper obviously doesn’t really

00:01:24:03 – 00:01:26:01

make any sense, but when there’s an actual

00:01:26:01 – 00:01:27:16

physical problem in front of you that needs

00:01:27:16 – 00:01:30:09

you to use maths, trigonometry being one of them,

00:01:30:09 – 00:01:32:11

it does help you quite considerably, yeah.

00:01:32:11 – 00:01:34:16

The other one being science and obviously physics.

00:01:34:16 – 00:01:37:17

Again, engineering is all based around physics.

00:01:37:17 – 00:01:40:00

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

00:01:40:00 – 00:01:42:08

that you have learned at GCSE that

00:01:42:08 – 00:01:44:03

you will relate back to in this situation.

00:01:44:03 – 00:01:46:18

you will relate back to in this situation.

00:01:46:20 – 00:01:48:20

Left school with my GCSEs,

00:01:48:20 – 00:01:52:00

went to a college to do public service.

00:01:52:00 – 00:01:54:18

My first job after I’d left college,

00:01:54:18 – 00:01:58:10

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

00:01:58:10 – 00:02:00:00

But essentially because I was so more

00:02:00:00 – 00:02:02:09

hands-on than anything else, they loved it.

00:02:02:09 – 00:02:04:03

It was all good and I made camper vans

00:02:04:03 – 00:02:05:15

for two years essentially.

00:02:05:15 – 00:02:07:17

Just working on a production line, putting

00:02:07:17 – 00:02:10:08

bits together, until it got to the end.

00:02:10:08 – 00:02:13:05

What I found was though,

00:02:13:05 – 00:02:14:16

you kind of hit the ceiling with it quite

00:02:14:16 – 00:02:16:21

quick in how you then could progress with it.

00:02:16:21 – 00:02:18:16

Again, there’s no qualifications in there.

00:02:18:16 – 00:02:20:10

Left there, got this apprenticeship.

00:02:20:10 – 00:02:22:04

The apprenticeship works, you have a

00:02:22:04 – 00:02:24:06

first two years, it was with Toyota.

00:02:24:06 – 00:02:26:10

So you’re with them for two years essentially

00:02:26:10 – 00:02:28:07

just learning all the basics.

00:02:28:07 – 00:02:30:15

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

00:02:30:15 – 00:02:32:23

just to understand the site essentially.

00:02:32:23 – 00:02:34:20

After that, you drop straight into the

00:02:34:20 – 00:02:37:15

deep end and you’re with the shifts here,

00:02:37:15 – 00:02:40:01

and it’s going round doing their everyday job,

00:02:40:01 – 00:02:42:17

but doing an NVQ on the side of that where

00:02:42:17 – 00:02:44:00

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

00:02:44:00 – 00:02:45:09

written up or you’ll have someone come and

00:02:45:09 – 00:02:48:18

assess you just to check your competency in that.

00:02:48:18 – 00:02:50:15

A lot more of that essentially for another

00:02:50:15 – 00:02:52:13

two years and then you get your qualification and

00:02:52:13 – 00:02:54:20

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

00:02:54:20 – 00:02:56:15

You’re here physically doing a job that

00:02:56:15 – 00:02:58:09

someone’s gonna overlook what you’re doing.

00:02:58:09 – 00:03:00:20

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

00:03:00:20 – 00:03:03:11

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

00:03:03:11 – 00:03:05:06

And because you haven’t got anything to apply with

00:03:05:06 – 00:03:07:02

your hands and see how things actually physically work,

00:03:07:02 – 00:03:08:14

it’s just completely different, and I think

00:03:08:14 – 00:03:10:10

it’s to do with how people learn essentially.

00:03:10:10 – 00:03:12:13

So the qualification itself is a

00:03:12:13 – 00:03:14:19

multi-skilled mechatronics engineer,

00:03:14:19 – 00:03:16:04

so you’ve got a background

00:03:16:04 – 00:03:18:22

in pneumatics, electrical and mechanical.

00:03:18:22 – 00:03:19:21

I finished my apprenticeship.

00:03:19:21 – 00:03:21:13

I was then a maintenance engineer as

00:03:21:13 – 00:03:22:21

part of a team, looking after the

00:03:22:21 – 00:03:24:20

same cranes that I’m looking after now.

00:03:24:20 – 00:03:26:21

After doing that for a couple of years,

00:03:26:21 – 00:03:28:16

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

00:03:28:16 – 00:03:31:04

the management role of the same cranes, so looking

00:03:31:04 – 00:03:33:04

after the people I used to work with essentially.

00:03:33:04 – 00:03:34:20

Before I started the apprenticeship, the biggest

00:03:34:20 – 00:03:37:14

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

00:03:37:14 – 00:03:39:21

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

00:03:39:21 – 00:03:41:04

I got diagnosed in year seven.

00:03:41:04 – 00:03:46:00

It was quite tricky, to be honest.

00:03:46:02 – 00:03:47:19

Problem with schools, to do well there

00:03:47:19 – 00:03:49:09

you’ve gotta fit into a certain box.

00:03:49:09 – 00:03:50:12

Not saying that I didn’t do well,

00:03:50:12 – 00:03:51:18

it’s just that I think I was just

00:03:51:18 – 00:03:53:22

teetering on the other side of that box.

00:03:53:22 – 00:03:56:19

Once you leave school, the box gets

00:03:56:19 – 00:03:59:07

infinitely big and you can fit in

00:03:59:07 – 00:04:00:08

wherever you need to fit in essentially.