Sometimes careers and working life find a natural meeting point where personal aptitude and company needs are happily matched, and where ‘round peg meets round hole’.
Naturally, it helps a great deal when people are aware of their strengths, aptitudes and aspirations. Ben Mellor, for example (pictured above) knew from an early age that his interest and talent lay in all things mechanical.
Boddingtons spotted Ben’s abilities with machines and with engineering; put him through a four year apprenticeship scheme and now Ben is a key part of the company’s process engineering team; going wherever manufacturing processes need optimising and wherever bottle necks need to be cleared. Ben is also a key member of the pilot group undertaking the LEAD continuous improvement training at the company.
Boddingtons grew its intake of apprentices in 2015/16 in order to bring on the right skills to both replace retiring engineers and to also invest in the teams of the future. The company’s apprentice intake is being boosted even further through 2017.
Robbie Boorer, 18, and Luke Thirkettle, 17, have both joined the Boddingtons team. Both are studying under the Advanced Engineering Apprenticeship scheme. One day a week sees them attend The Leigh UTC, where a STEM-based curriculum is geared to independent student study and to the needs of local employers in engineering, IT and science based businesses.
As an accredited “Qualifications & Credit Framework” Training Centre, the Boddingtons workforce generally is trained to a level 1 status with the opportunity and an incentive provided to achieve level 2 and above.
In support of its high-tech manufacturing ethic the company has recruited extensively over the past three years, adding considerable additional expertise to its technical and quality departments.
Managing Director Andy Tibbs says that ‘we retain the best, we foster the team ethic and we also aim to recruit the best, especially with regard to fully exploiting the resources at our £4.6m state of the art manufacturing facility.’
Tibbs adds that ‘we have lately added NPI, Regulatory and further Quality Engineers to our workforce. This allows us to seamlessly introduce new programs and produce detailed technical files for the CE and FDA requirements of our customers.’
