Amy Lister from Worcester wanted to pursue a career where she could work for as long as she wanted to – and she had a keen interest in becoming an electrician.
She now works for Stephen Goodridge, who owns Worcester-based electrical contracting firm Goodridge electrical, a thriving small business.
Amy began her apprenticeship training with JTL in July 2018 and was expecting to be clearing up after Stephen for the first few months. She was pleasantly surprised however, to find that she was shadowing him on jobs and given the chance to have a go at challenging tasks like changing a fuse board pretty early on. She enjoys her one day a week at college and being able to bring back the things she has learned and put them into practice while doing her job.
Every day is very different but here’s a taste of what Amy does in her job.
“Each day starts at a different time depending on where we are working that day, but typically an hour and a half before picking up time, the alarm goes off. After a couple of snoozes, I’m finally up, washed and dressed and after a cup of tea I’m ready for the day ahead. After breakfast I make my and my wife’s lunch and then off I go. Steve collects me from home, recently he’s taken to being chauffeured, so I get in the driver’s seat and we’re off. Our day is normally in and around Worcester or we take the hour’s drive to Hereford.
What I do for the day is dependent entirely on where we are and what job we’re doing. Some days we work at Hereford Hospital, either on projects which involve lots of installations or it is undertaking the 5-yearly testing. Many of my days have involved installing dado trunking where I work with Mike, our sub-contractor, measuring and cutting the parts of the dado and helping Mike to install it. Lighting installation is another big task for the hospital, so I’ve done lots of pre-wiring of LED panels ready for Steve to install.
Away from the hospital, I am doing anything from PAT testing to installing ovens, to changing fuse boards, to moving cables around in loft spaces, to changing light fittings, to installing lights 10 metres down a well!
We recently refreshed the lighting set up and some sockets in a coffee shop. The new manager called us in as the wiring of the lighting was a little dodgy to say the least, alongside other issues such as sockets not working. We started by testing the whole building, this created a list of errors to take care of such as replacing damaged sockets and putting in new cable runs for higher powered devices. The lighting was to be installed on the surface in steel conduit, so many hours were spent cutting, bending and threading conduit to allow the lights to be fed. Once this was done, I installed a few extra sockets in the kitchen, measuring, cutting and installing trunking and sockets.
I really enjoy install jobs, as you can see what you’ve achieved, and it gives a real sense of job satisfaction.
My day ends around 5pm sometimes the travel home takes till 6pm, then depending on what day it is, I might be seeing my stepson, or playing rounders for my local team in the summer or going to hockey training in the winter. This week my evenings have been filled with following the women’s world cup on the TV!”
