My role as an MMC (Mechanical Maintenance Craftsman) / Maintenance Team Leader includes liaising with my Production Foreman, Senior Maintenance Foreman and Area Manager to discuss and plan day to day activities/issues, long term maintenance projects and PPM.I use my extensive experience and my depth of knowledge to assess and prioritise the workload in order to delegate the tasks to myself and my maintenance team, communicating the order of priority and utilising their specific skills appropriately to achieve production targets whilst ensuring they clearly understand their roles. My priority is that we work safely and efficiently to Lean Manufacturing standards, whilst striving to deliver a high quality, efficient service with minimum downtime and optimum uptime.

My tasks as a Plant Technician involved operating and maintaining a gas fired combined cycle power station. Duties involved monitoring and treating the water for the steam turbine, balancing the plant, maintaining and repairing the various equipment on site to ensure that the power station ran efficiently in order to meet our contractual requirements. I was also responsible for putting out contracts for tender, procuring suitable contractors to carry out said contracts for both the day to day running of the plant and during the annual outages.Later I was given the opportunity to trade the electricity for the station under the New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA) via brokers in London, various counter-parties and placing Bids and Offers into the National Grid Balancing Market. To be able to carry out this role, I designed a spreadsheet which, using various factors such as weather conditions, age of the plant etc, accurately predicted the output of the plant. This spreadsheet then enabled me to sell our electricity capacity to the full, ensuring maximum revenue without overcommitting the plant.

As a fitter I maintained 6 production lines running various products via many different types on equipment including carton packaging machines, tube fillers and sealers, rotary bottle feeders, cap placers and tighteners, heat shrinkers, high volume shampoo fillers, conveyors etc.I was then promoted to Process Leader where my main task was managing the day to day running of a production line, liaising between management, planners, stores, quality etc. My main goal was to achieve efficient and high productivity in a safe and hygienic manner. My role included ensuring that staff were fully trained in the required aspects of their position to ensure that they could carry out designated tasks efficiently and that they were fully aware of the importance of health and safety standards.

Shaping, forming and later fitting the pipework in the construction of a new Blast Furnace.

Duties involved the installation of new machinery, vessels, pumps, conveyors etc. I was kept on as the last Mechanical Fitter at the installation, correcting all issues on the snag list.

Replacing pipework, pumps, vessels etc on a major outage

My apprenticeship in Alcoa was a diverse and well organised one where we spent 3 to 6 months in various departments which included:Machine ShopWelding ShopGrinding ShopPipe FittersTackle Fitters (Hoist Repair)Vehicle RepairCasting ShopCrane FittersMechanical Fitters on the Hot MillMechanical Fitters on the Cold MillMechanical Fitters in the Extrusion plantThe apprenticeship was fully supervised and assessed by the Engineering Industry Training Board and my E.I.T.B. Certificate of Craftsmanship was awarded after all segment specifications were met, which included:Common core skills (Maintenance) Mechanical Drives and MechanismsPipe cutting and joining,Pipework systems maintenanceMechanical Plant MaintenanceHydraulic and Pneumatic SystemsSafety Drawings/symbols