BLOG: Anthony's Apprenticeship Story

Featured Image

As it's National Apprenticeship Week 2021, we're shining the spotlight on some of our apprentices as they tell their own stories.

Hello, my name is Anthony Innes and I am currently completing my Safety, Health and Environmental technician Level 3 apprenticeship with Gateshead College. The apprenticeship has three areas of focus:

  • Safety - the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury
  • Health - the state of being free from illness or injury
  • Environmental- relating to the natural world and the impact of human activity on its condition.

What attracted me to enrol onto this particular apprenticeship was the career I can build on the back of completing my education. Health and safety is already a huge aspect of every workplace and is only growing bigger as years go on. My aspirations with my career for the next 5 years is to try to gain some experience within a full health and safety role and hopefully establish myself within my company.

The company I work for is called A&P Group. We are global ship repair, conversion and marine specialists. Our projects entail fabrication of various different projects in our large fabrication facilities and construction/ conservation of large marine projects in our different dry docks around the country as well as in Australia.

My role within the company is to establish and maintain all health and safety matters to the highest standard, with the main aim of “work safe home safe”. Both my college sessions which educate me on different health safety and environmental requirements, as well as the on the job training has helped me massively to have a happy first year and a half at A&P and hopefully for many more years in the future.

Covid-19 hasn't really impacted on my workplace as we are classed as an essential workforce by the Government. This has helped to keep me very busy throughout these difficult times and ultimately kept my mind occupied. To be able to continue progressing with my college work we have had to use new technology and continue our sessions online and after a few initial hurdles, the tutors have handled the situation brilliantly and delivered the required sessions as planned.

All in all I am very pleased that I decided on an apprenticeship as it has brought me lots of opportunities as well as real experience with workplace systems and situations which should ultimately aid me in having a better understanding throughout my working career. An apprenticeship is basically being paid to learn and who wouldn’t want to do that?

Fri Mar 29 2024