Engineering Degree Apprentice Review

As an engineering degree apprentice at airbus, the role can change quite a bit. You move into different placements in different areas across the business. Areas you can work in can be design, stress, fatigue, procurement, architecture. Depending on which team you're in the work will change, I have done a lot of designing of parts and stuff like that, but it also depends on the target area you are assigned to, I am a wing apprentice and therefore only work on wing related topics

The course is generally organised, but there are definitely a lot of issues. The first organisational issue we faced was that we all believed we would be living in Filton first year, it wasn't until a couple of months before the start date that we were told we should be looking for accommodation in Weston-Super-Mare as that is where we would be for the first 6 months of the course as we would be in education full time, this meant quite a few people had places to live in Bristol and would have to travel an hour every morning and afternoon just to attend college.
The next issue I faced was that some placement managers did not seem to know what their role was in terms of managing an early careers employee, my first placement manager did not give much if any support in the placement. People who are chosen to be placement managers should go through training that informs them about the apprenticeship scheme and what they will need to do to support an apprentice.
Training for certain placements also wasn't organised in the correct timeframe, and in some cases it just wasn't available. To work in a design placement you need to undergo 3 weeks of training to use CATIA V5, the design software that is used in the majority of Airbus. Some people were given design placements before this training could be arranged, meaning they did an entire 6 months in a design placement without having done the training.
The CATIA training itself proved to be badly planned, as the trainer that was available for our sessions had never given the training in English before, the training was also designated during times that we had holiday booked right before Christmas, this meant holidays had to be cancelled and thankfully we were able to move this annual leave time to the next year, however this is rare.

You very much have to make it known that you need support, and it also depends on your managers and TAO. We recently got a new early careers manager who is very good with giving support when needed, however we have definitely had issues before.

Support from weston is hard to come by, and of sub par quality. Support from UWE is much better as the lecturers know the topics better and care more about your learning it seems. You can also attend lectures at UWE for topics you are undertaking at weston college, which allows you to get around the not brilliant quality of teaching from weston lecturers

In reality, the work and training I do at University has very little relation to the work I am performing at Airbus. It definitely allows you to have a better understanding of why things are the way they are and why things are done in certain ways, but you won't be directly applying your uni learning in work as the majority of calculations that are performed are done using software that does it for you. And in a design role you don't use uni work at all.

Yes

Overall it's a good opportunity for anyone who wants to get into engineering, even if you're not super interested in aerospace the degree can be used pretty much anywhere and with 4 years of experience at Airbus alongside the degree you'll be astoundingly attractive when applying for jobs, not to mention the level 2 qualifications you get from Weston College in first year. The Airbus wage is also among the highest of the companies that provide this course. Airbus also has some of the best benefits, with only a 35 hour contract its one of the lowest among the companies that provide this course and you can work from home for 40% of your hours (Providing you have permission from your manager)