George Laraway

In this role I spent the first 9 months learning core engineering disciplines e.g. electrical, fitting and mechanical engineering. Then moving into the business to complete placements in different roles and gained a wider use of these core disciplines and how they are used in our industry.

Key takeaways -

• Learnt a number of various engineering skills and processes.
• Developed a core understanding of BAE Systems ideology towards engineering.
• Improved communication, listening and professionalism skills.

Due to the pandemic a lot of this time was spent working from home, this meant my communications skills quickly improved due to the isolation of starting new jobs remotely.

This is where I chose to exit my apprenticeship, although I never had this role as a placement I always new I wanted to be a designer. I was trained to use Catia V5 and eventually start on Fibersim and become a crucial member in getting parts pushed through the life cycle and released.

Key takeaways -

• Worked on design and release of trimmed carbon fibre skins/panels on all fuselages.
• Helped improve and simplify design process, spotting time consuming tasks and software issues that needed work arounds.
• Started working on untrimmed parts to get the full design process knowledge, looking at parts needing re work and amending any comments raised again them.

This role has made me improve time keeping and work load management due to the huge workloads and sort deadlines in the program.