FEATURE: Engineer your dream career with Myerscough College

Tomorrow’s Engineers Week shines a spotlight on engineering, engineering careers and engineering professionals. From individual engineers to professional engineering institutions and global engineering companies, it’s an opportunity to showcase modern engineering and inspirational engineers and technicians.

At Myerscough College and University Centre, a large variety of study programmes and apprenticeships offer a direct career path into the sector, across a variety of subjects, including Agricultural engineering, Motorsports, Farriery, Sportsturf, rail, construction and land-based engineering programmes.

Myerscough boasts a large intake of Railway Engineering Technician apprentices. The apprentices are employed within Northern Trains and East Midlands Railway depots across the country and have all just begun their learning journey with Myerscough.

They spend the first academic year as residential learners at Myerscough College’s main campus at Bilsborrow, utilising the College's multi-million-pound engineering centre to learn the basic principles of engineering and rail engineering technician knowledge. The remainder at their apprenticeship continues at their depots with their host employers, getting hands-on experience and gaining crucial skills, knowledge and behaviours.

One current Myerscough College Level 3 Railway Engineering Technician Apprentice is Kyle Martin, who works for Northern Trains.

Kyle has been sharing his thoughts on engineering and his reasons for choosing the apprenticeship and career choice.

Why do you think it’s important that companies like Northern recognise Tomorrow’s Engineers Week?

Tomorrow’s Engineers Week is all about raising awareness of potential careers within engineering and to reach those people who might not have considered engineering as a future career path. As a public transport organisation who rely heavily on all manners of engineering on a daily basis, it is important for Northern and other rail operating companies to ensure that there is a continued interest and passion amongst the up and coming generations so that this can help to develop and drive the industry in the future. Only through attracting those people who are both talented and interested can the rail industry continue to improve and grow moving forward.

What inspired you to get into engineering?

Throughout my life engineering is an area that has appealed to me and I have always held an interest in finding out and learning how and why things work the way that they do. Whether this is through taking items apart and seeing how they go back together, or reading and watching videos to learn about different systems, developing my own skills and knowledge is something I enjoy and is something that I believe is fundamental within engineering.

Having worked closely alongside engineering colleagues in my previous roles in public transport, I have also seen firsthand the positive difference that people in engineering roles can make to the everyday lives of people through applying skills and knowledge to solve problems and provide safe and reliable services, and this was something that I knew I wanted to be involved in moving forward in my career.

After taking a short career break to consider the next steps for my future, I made the decision to follow my interests and look for an engineering opportunity that would provide me with the chance to continue learning and put this knowledge to use in a practical way on a daily basis to help people. Having started my apprenticeship with Northern, there are constantly new opportunities to learn about systems, components and engineering techniques and I look forward to continuing this in the future.

What do you love the most about your job?

The thing that I love most about my job is the opportunity and support that is provided to enable me to improve and grow my own knowledge and skillset. Whether this is through learning more in depth about how a certain system or component works, working as part of a team to find and solve a problem, or is related to improving my own practical techniques when completing specific tasks, support and encouragement is given by all to help me improve and develop every day.

In addition to this, it is also good to know that the work my colleagues and I do helps to make a positive difference through delivering safer and more reliable services to thousands of people on a daily basis.

How do you think your area of engineering will change or help change the world by 2033?

Possibly the biggest area where engineering within rail will help to change the world is through encouraging the global push towards lower carbon emissions. As rail infrastructure improves and trains continue moving towards more environmentally friendly methods of operation, it is important to ensure that services are safe, reliable and attractive to encourage people on board and grow the industry.

What do you think are some jobs or engineering projects of the future that young people today could be working in?

Looking specifically at opportunities for people within the rail industry in the future, there are a wide variety of projects or roles that may be available in the future. Whether you are more interested in the maintenance side of engineering and working to fix trains and deliver safe and reliable services or are more interested in the design and infrastructure side, the ever changing nature of technology means that there will continue to be interesting opportunities for people within rail in the future.

For more information on Railway Engineering Apprenticeships at Myerscough College contact Employer Services on 01995 642255 or email employerenquiries@myerscough.ac.uk

In another example, Myerscough is one of the top centres for the training of Construction Plant Engineering apprentices from across the industry. Working with a wide range of employers the College provides apprenticeships in Construction Plant Maintenance and also Land-based Engineering at both Intermediate (Level 2) and Advanced (Level 3).

We try and equip learners with everything they need to grow with their employers and also in their own personal development. Our tutors are all industry qualified, and we work with the latest in technology advancements to ensure our programmes are fit for purpose and what industry is looking for.

Myerscough College has a long and proven track record of delivering a diverse range of further education study programmes where Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) are a key driver of provision. Find out more about some of this at the links below:

Myerscough holds inaugural STEM Conference

Myerscough and M-Sport renew partnership

Myerscough awarded STEM Assured status

Myerscough College continue engineering apprenticeship recruitment drive across the UK