Engineering news
A team of three apprentices from BAE Systems will represent the UK in the WorldSkills Championships, making and testing a mini motorbike from designs drawn up over the past year.
The trio will compete in the manufacturing team challenge at the event in London in October, completing three surprise tasks that will test specific skills such as welding, CNC machining, and general fabrication – all over the course of 22 hours.
Team member Sam Andrews, a machinist at BAE System's Samlesbury site, said: “It's four days where nothing else matters. Its the only opportunity we'll get to represent our country at something we're good at.”
The trio have been in full-time training for the competition for the past 10 months and have recently returned from their first international competition. At the Australian Global Skills Challenge in July, the team competed in the surprise skills task against the Australian, Dutch and French teams to win second place.
The WorldSkills Championships is an international skills competition that is held every two years. This year, more than 1,000 young people representing 50 countries will compete to be the best of the best in 46 skill areas at the ExCeL centre in London.
Member of the UK manufacturing challenge team Kai Burkitt, an advanced manufacture engineer also from the Samlesbury BAE System's site, said that Korea are the team to beat. “They've never missed a podium spot.” The third team member is Rachel Carr, a flight systems engineer on Typhoon at Warton in Lancashire, who recently won BAE System's apprentice of the year 2011.
Team members are hoping to use the skills they have learned throughout the experience to further their careers. Andrews said: “This competition has put me years ahead of where I would have been. It has helped me gain experience that I wouldn't have got otherwise.” These skills include project management, time management, communication and negotiation.
Karl McKenzie Brown, UK team expert in the manufacturing team challenge, said: “These people are our future. We want to showcase the engineering skills that we have available in the future.”
He went on: “Apprenticeships have again come to the fore as a more vocational option to get people on a career path. They are another way of learning and developing skills.”