Utility Apprenticeships will help to engineer your future career prospects

Each day we all use some form of utility from boiling the kettle to sending an email. But do you really know how your electricity supply or internet connection is accessible at the flick of a switch?

There are four utility services available which include Water, Gas, Electric and Telecom. We all take these services for granted on a daily bases, we expect water to come out of the tap or your internet connection to be super fast. But to get these services to your home or work place many hours go into installing and maintaining the services.

Take for instance Fibre Broadband, gone are the days of dial up, we all expect super fast broadband whether at home or work and historically broadband has been provided through copper lines which are now all being replaced by fibre optics. This is a mammoth task, having to replace thousands of miles of copper cables not just to the green boxes you see at the end of your street but being directly connected to your home. There are many companies evolving to be the front runners over BT to connect fibre to your home such as CityFibre or Hyperoptic all wanting to connect Gigabit connectivity.

Other utilities are upgrading to such as water and gas, companies such as Thames Water or Cadent Gas (Formerly National Grid Gas) are all replacing redundant copper and other corrosive pipes to keep your supply going. Cadent Gas are working with Triio a joint venture between Morrison Utility Services and Skanska to replace much of the old gas pipes with more durable pipes across many parts of the UK and employ over 3,000 staff across engineering and operations.

What does this mean for you, well skill sets in these sectors are ageing and because of this they need to pass down valuable knowledge to new entrants through apprenticeships. The majority of apprenticeships on offer are in civil engineering or telecoms. BT has recently launched their telecom apprenticeship programme to help stem the skills shortage in the industry. Starting an apprenticeship in the telecom sector is great, you learn from the best and acquitter valuable skills for the future. On average qualified and skilled engineers can earn anything from £30,000 per annum as a splicer or telecom technician to £50,000 plus as a project manager.

Civil Engineering apprenticeships offer great value to and a steady and reliable career opportunity, after all utilities will be around for ever which means there will always be a need for staff. Learning from the ground up is a great way to absorb the skills required to succeed in this industry, from digging holes to laying mains you can carve out a long lasting career. Once qualified your earning potential is vast, some mains layers can earn anything unto £1,000 per day.

And lets not forget these jobs aren’t just for the boys, women in engineering is becoming more and more popular and all companies are actively encouraging women to enter the world of engineering and construction in fact it is celebrated annually with the international women in engineering day on 23rd June.

View all the latest Utility Apprenticeships.