WPD supports National Apprenticeship Week by offering more than 50 craft apprenticeships
As National Apprenticeship Week gets underway, Western Power Distribution (WPD) is on the hunt for 54 craft apprentices, including two in the Telford area.
The three crafts are fitters, who look after switches and transformers in substations, jointers, who work on the underground cable network, and linespeople, who deal with the overhead line network.
As the company that distributes electricity to customers’ homes, WPD’s engineers are key workers and have kept working throughout the coronavirus pandemic. And that applies to the company’s apprentices too – none have been made redundant or furloughed.
Instead, WPD has adjusted its training programme to enable social distancing. This has seen classrooms at its training schools in Tipton and Taunton replaced by Zoom and screens placed between stations in training workshops.
WPD is seeking to recruit the 54 apprentices across the Midlands, South West and South Wales.
“Our hope is always that our apprentices and trainees will stay with us throughout their working lives,” said engineering policy manager Carl Ketley-Lowe. “Demonstrating right at the beginning that we’re serious about their training is vital. With social distancing halving the number of people we could train in the ‘normal’ way, we had to get creative.”
Keeping the existing network running isn’t the only task WPD faces – the company is also at the heart of building the future as it adjusts its network to cater for low carbon technologies such as electric vehicles, heat pumps and solar panels that will help meet the country’s net zero carbon emissions targets.
To find out more about WPD’s apprenticeships visit careers.westernpower.co.uk
