Career change - Plumbing & Heating

[Rev Limit]

I’ve been in IT for about 10 years, started off doing support/infrastructure and for the last 5 or so years I’ve been managing Infrastructure projects. I’ve been feeling burnt out/fed up with it all for a few years now, so I’ve started to think about a career change

I think I’ve settled on plumbing and heating.
Access Training UK in Kent offer an ‘intensive’ course which looks good and would get me qualified quickly although obviously wouldn’t get me the on job experience an apprenticeship would. Has anyone done any training with Access before?

Has anyone else gone from an office/desk based role into a trade? How did you find it?

Cheers

[Macneil]

Have you ever worked on the tools or in construction in any way? Are you a keen DIYer?

[eliot]

quite a change there.
Are you ready to go round scummy houses with scummy people and deal all the potential grief.

[Rev Limit]

Never worked on the tools/construction, went straight into IT after finishing college. I do DIY around the house, I will have a go at most things and I do enjoy it (part of the reason for thinking about moving into a trade)

[Rev Limit]

eliot said:

quite a change there.
Are you ready to go round scummy houses with scummy people and deal all the potential grief.

Absolutely, I’m not squeamish

[usn90]

Please do your research, I know of the courses you mention but you will not gain a full NVQ, to gain that you must pass the full courses + apprenticeships.

Plenty of people have fell foul of this when trying to register themselves as a plumber

[W201_190e]

usn90 said:

Please do your research, I know of the courses you mention but you will not gain a full NVQ, to gain that you must pass the full courses + apprenticeships.

Plenty of people have fell foul of this when trying to register themselves as a plumber

A friend of mine ended up in the same boat, unfortunately after spending £6k on courses.

[Rev Limit]

The course I have been looking at with Access training gets you a Level 2 NVQ in plumbing and heating

Here’s the link: https://www.accesstraininguk.co.uk/plumbing-course...

[usn90]

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com...

To gain the full NVQ there needs to be a workplace part of the process, eg apprenticeship.

Plenty of people have paid for the course then not been able to find anywhere to take them on

[austina35]

As above. I have level 3 etc and it's right, you need workplace assessment to gain nvq.

Unfortunately the industry doesn't recognize anything else. You would also need a blue cscs card which you wont get without the above.

This is why there is a shortage of skilled people.

I came out of this after 20 odd years as the winter months are a killer. You will do 70 odd hours a week if you do on call etc. I earned serious money but had no life so moved to mechanical engineering. I still hold my papers and renewed some this year.

[Algarve]

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.accesstrainin...

[eliot]

Algarve said:

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.accesstrainin...

blimey bunch of chancers it would seem.

[Rev Limit]

Thanks for the replies all, those reviews don’t make good reading...

I’ll have a look into other providers, but I assume they’re all much of a much? Unless anyone knows of any in the South East that are good?

On the workplace assessment, I’ll have to reach out to local plumbing firms to see whether they’d take me on.

[hyphen]

Can you not do it a proper college rather than a provider?

[Rev Limit]

hyphen said:

Can you not do it a proper college rather than a provider?

Yep, my local college runs part time courses, they take 2/3 years to complete plus I wouldn’t be able to start until September 2021 now. Ideally I want to get the qualifications and start working much quicker than that.

Cheers

[Algarve]

Rev Limit said:

Yep, my local college runs part time courses, they take 2/3 years to complete plus I wouldn’t be able to start until September 2021 now. Ideally I want to get the qualifications and start working much quicker than that.

Cheers

But that's part of the problem... you can't legitimately learn it and start earning after doing a course for a couple of months. Its a borderline scam, the only one making any money are the course providers.

If it were so quick, easy and cheap to change your career to plumbing far more people would be doing it and the wages wouldn't be at the level that got you interested in doing this in the first place.

My dads a plumber/gas guy and he says the amount of these scam courses being run is just ridiculous. Most of them not worth the paper they're printed on.

[Rev Limit]

Thanks for the replies all

After looking into this over the last few weeks I don’t think realistically I’ll be able to retrain and land a role within the timescales I was hoping so I’ve shelved this (for the time being anyway).

My plan b is to get back into a Technical support/infrastructure role which I’m going to move forward with.

Cheers

[rustyuk]

You would be better up-skilling in IT and going contracting.

[Rev Limit]

rustyuk said:

You would be better up-skilling in IT and going contracting.

I’m already contracting, as a Project Manager

It’s the technical side I want to get back to, already got some certs lined up...

Cheers