Becoming an electrician from scratch

[Steve]

I'm re-assessing my career prospects and feel I've come as far as i can in my current job (retail manager).

Regulars will remember my frequent contributions to this forum before I got a girlfriend and had a child. I do love tinkering with electrics and always have. I rewired my own kitchen a few years ago.

I have two career options. Train driver (excellent salary £45k but awful chance of success with 400 applications for every vacancy). Electrician.

Unfortunately i cannot commit to full time courses because i cant afford to quit my job.

What courses would i need to pass to become an electrician? And what would be my career entry options?

 

[bernardgreen]

Train driver (excellent salary £45k but awful chance of success with 400 applications for every vacancy).

Being a train driver is good fun. Except for the shift working and the effect it has on the other members of the family. A friend has recently qualified as a driver and his family are finding it hard to cope with dad often sleeping in the day and not being there at night. And one week after going solo he had to do a full emergency stop when a wheel chair with person in it got stuck on the track at a foot path crossing. She was pulled clear in time but it shook him up a lot. The paper work took hours.

 

[Steve]

Train driver (excellent salary £45k but awful chance of success with 400 applications for every vacancy).

Being a train driver is good fun. Except for the shift working and the effect it has on the other members of the family. A friend has recently qualified as a driver and his family are finding it hard to cope with dad often sleeping in the day and not being there at night. And one week after going solo he had to do a full emergency stop when a wheel chair with person in it got stuck on the track at a foot path crossing. She was pulled clear in time but it shook him up a lot. The paper work took hours.

One of the lucky ones to get accepted. The shifts for a passenger operator aren't too dissimilar to the shifts I'm having to do at the moment and the salary makes it worthwhile. I'm still regularly checking for trainee driver vacancies but they are few and far between. It costs about £60k to train a new driver.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Tell TFL you'd love to drive trains at night.

 

[DetlefSchmitz]

If you become a train driver, and also moonlight as an electrician, then don't post about it on this forum. One of the regulars here was banned from another electrical forum for shopping a train driver to their employer for moonlighting and losing him his job.

 

[RF Lighting]

You can do a college course on evenings / days off from your current job to get your paper qualifications. I know a few lads including my business partner who got into the industry this way whilst still working in their existing industry.

As I'm sure you'll appreciate, there's no shortcut to actually learning the trade and this can only be gained by hands on experience. Do you know any local electricians? You could ask if you could work for them on evenings / weekends to get some hands on insight to the trade.

If you're prepared to travel I could give you a bit of work.

Don't expect to start earning straight away, or to ever earn mega money.

Self employment is not as great as you might imagine. Whilst it gives you the freedom to pick and choose which jobs to take and when you work or take time off, it also comes with all the hassle of chasing money, spending hours on end quoting, invoicing, accounting etc and never knowing when or if you will ever get paid. Also not getting paid holidays, sick pay or a pension. I'd seriously recommend working for someone to start with to build up capital and experience. This also gives you chance to make and learn from all the F ups you are bound to make as a newbie whilst you've still got the experience of the other lads at the firm who will be able to fix what you've done wrong.

It will take you around 2 or 3 years to get up to speed as a domestic installer, and 7+ years for a proper electrician working on standard installations.

I've gone down the path of specialising in theatre installations. Whilst it keeps me in demand and allows me to earn more money as there aren't so many lads who can do the work, it means spending a lot of my life on the road and living out of hotels as there will never be enough work in your local area.

Anyone who has worked away for long periods of time will tell you the novelty soon wears off and it will put a tremendous strain on your family life especially with a young daughter at home.

Having said all that, it's a very rewarding career and there is nothing better than standing back and looking at a difficult job you've completed successfully and thinking "I did / fixed all that with my brain and my own two hands"

 

[Adam_151]

I've gone down the path of specialising in theatre installations. Whilst it keeps me in demand and allows me to earn more money as there aren't so many lads who can do the work, it means spending a lot of my life on the road and living out of hotels as there will never be enough work in your local area.

Surely its not that specialist on the installation of it, its just the design and commissioning that keeps general electrical contractors out?

 

[ericmark]

The getting into the electrical trade is a combination of luck and connections and other than working as a sole trader where it's really down to gift of the gab getting people to use your services the problem is getting an employer to take you on.

Traditionally people would work as an electricians mate and after 6 or 7 years with some exams under the belt try to get firm to upgrade you to electrician. In the main it is not a aim when working as a mate it just becomes a option latter as you get better.

My son did this route he worked on shop refits, alarm installation, house wiring, and a host of other jobs before deciding to work as a sole trader this was easier then as Part P was not in. He then went cards in and now has his HND and works as an electrical engineer. Time scale was 18 years from leaving Uni to become an electrical engineer. He was lucky he had studied maths in Uni so found the courses easier than most.

But he started as he left Uni (he dropped out without getting a degree) at around 19 and is now 37 and for many of those early years he was on low money. He also had a Dad who was an electrician, and one grand dad was electrical consultant for a hospital board and other technical superintendent for the steel works power station. He also managed to get his employer to allow him to take holidays one day a week so he could go to Uni to get HND.

At the time he started I paid for him to do three night class courses from memory around £80 for the three which ran one after the other so 16th Edition, PAT testing then inspection and testing (C&G 2391) however when we came to get 17th Edition the price had rocketed and it was £80 just for the short course to upgrade to C&G 2382. So what in 2002 cost £80 now costs around £300. I wanted to just take exam, it hardly needs a course to show you how to read the book. however colleges and schools for that matter now have league tables so if they allow people to site and fail exams as outside candidates it seems this impacts on their position on the league tables so they have stopped doing it.

At least three on my sons jobs were got through me. In one case employing my son was a condition for me working for the company I insisted and got it. Being in the trade I also asked friends to get him jobs and so I wonder without my help if he would have ever got on that first rung of the ladder.

Be it bus driver, train driver or most other semi-skilled jobs if you get in at the right time then training is given. But that is not the case with skilled jobs. I was out of work in the 1980's and went on one of the government retraining courses 12 weeks and I would be a heavy plant mechanic, in ones dreams may be. Most would end up as semi-skilled mechanics mates for years firms simply did not want 12 week wonders. It also transpired with the qualifications I had I could have actually been employed to teach the course. It was considered as allied trade.

I also moved sidewards started as mechanic then auto electrician then electrician then electrical engineer in the main though working abroad. Largest qualification to work abroad is to have worked abroad firms were willing to employ people who were not that good but were unlikely to quit after 2 weeks. So looking back I was a chancer and when I went to work as a tunnel boring machine electrician in Hong Kong I had never worked underground before and believe me that's a whole different world.

I had to learn fast. When the guy employed to program the PLC's had a heart attack I had 3 weeks to find how to program and write a program for a concrete press the pressure in industry is high specially abroad where there is no one you can bring in at a moments notice. On the Falklands it took 2 to 4 weeks to get a guy out so it was a case of you had to fix it.

Photostat machine broke down and I was called. Comment I made was what do you expect me to do, answer your an electrician aren't you it's electrical you fix it. Actually with the book it was quite easy but this is an electricians life. As to money yes I earned a lot but rate was not that good it was all bonus and overtime that got the money including sitting drinking tea waiting for next break down.

Phone calls at 2 am if you did not go out you would not last long.

 

[ericmark]

I've gone down the path of specialising in theatre installations. Whilst it keeps me in demand and allows me to earn more money as there aren't so many lads who can do the work, it means spending a lot of my life on the road and living out of hotels as there will never be enough work in your local area.

Surely its not that specialist on the installation of it, its just the design and commissioning that keeps general electrical contractors out?

Most of my working life I have not worked from home. 1980 - 1983 Algeria, 1984 - 1988 Falklands, 1989 - 1995 Sizewell, 1995 - 1996 Seven Bridge then a spell at home, 1997 Hong Kong, 1999 - 2000 Wales and West fitting alarms in BT buildings. Also worked in Scotland, Ulster, and finally on the building of T5 Heathrow. From house bashing, to shipyard, to airports, to tunnels, even local jobs I found near living on the job. So yes I would agree being an electrician means living out of a suit case.