Any tips for a soon to be ground worker?

[Darkslider]

After ten years as a mechanic in various disciplines, I've accepted a job as a ground worker for a drainage and sewerage firm, with their civils team predominantly installing waste treatment plants both domestic and commercial. (UK based)

I've got a lot of experience of joinery, plumbing, electrics and general building as well my mechanics so I'm hoping I'll be able to hit the ground running, but is there anything in particular I should research or educate myself on before starting next week? I've been watching YouTube installs of septic tanks and cesspools to get an idea of what's involved but any tips from guys already in similar work would be appreciated.

I'm hoping to make a good enough impression to progress onto machine operating in short order.

Cheers!

[GT03ROB]

Being a ground worker is just about the worst job in construction. Ground workers are fooked by their mid 40s. Its horrible work.

In the bad old days when I used to do manual construction work during my vacations, I used to dread having that to do, Especially in the winter, when it's cold & wet & you've got to hand dig a drainage trench.

My tip get out of it as soon as you can!!

Sorry maybe not what you wanted to hear.

[mike74]

Surely if you've got a lot of experience in joinery, electrics, plumbing and mechanics you could do something better paying and more skilled than a groundworker?

Either working for yourself or for someone else as an odd job/property maintenance man or concentrate on one of your existing skills and get the relevant qualifications to set yourself up properly as a sparks or plumber.

Certainly in my location there's a dire shortage of tradesmen and handy men and the ones that are around are charging more for one day than you'll earn in a whole week as groundworker.

[Darkslider]

mike74 said:

Surely if you've got a lot of experience in joinery, electrics, plumbing and mechanics you could do something better paying and more skilled than a groundworker?

Either working for yourself or for someone else as an odd job/property maintenance man or concentrate on one of your existing skills and get the relevant qualifications to set yourself up properly as a sparks or plumber..

You'd think so, however I'm in a rural part of Wales and I've applied for the few general maintenance jobs as they come up with decent employers but either haven't been successful or I've been offered less pay than I'm on currently. I was offered a job at the local hospital but they wouldn't budge from the bottom of the band at £18k whereas I'm on 22 currently so that wasn't feasible.

I've considered setting up myself in a general property maintenance direction before, but having just taken out a mortgage on our first home and having accumulated £10k of unsecured debt in a previous toxic relationship I'm not in a position to be taking any leaps of faith currently.

Thanks for the insight though all very valid points that I've not overlooked so far!

[spikeyhead]

I'd let the local lettings agencies know that you're available for work out of hours and do some work evenings and weekends until that builds up well enough that you can ditch the groundwork

[Kit352]

I work in gas utilities. How old are you?
My suggestion to get out the ground works as quickly as possible is to take the courses for machinery as soon as possible. Go get your driving license if you dont have one, get your trailer endorsement and then if your company uses bigger Van's get a license to drive those as well. Hiab experience would be great to if your lifting tanks and pipeline into position. I think my companies starts hiab operators at close to 40k without overtime. Probably closer to 60k once tgats figured in.
I would suggest doing most things on your own rather than waiting for the company to potentially offer it up. Your main focus should be to get out of ground works and that means getting things on your own sometimes.

[blueg33]

Tony Pidgeley started as a ground worker...............

Wales is considered to have a shortage of supply of skilled construction trades - there must be something that uses your skills more?

Good luck

[GT03ROB]

blueg33 said:

Tony Pidgeley started as a ground worker...............

He had quite a life if its who I think....from very humble beginings

[Darkslider]

Kit352 said:

I work in gas utilities. How old are you?
My suggestion to get out the ground works as quickly as possible is to take the courses for machinery as soon as possible. Go get your driving license if you dont have one, get your trailer endorsement and then if your company uses bigger Van's get a license to drive those as well. Hiab experience would be great to if your lifting tanks and pipeline into position. I think my companies starts hiab operators at close to 40k without overtime. Probably closer to 60k once tgats figured in.
I would suggest doing most things on your own rather than waiting for the company to potentially offer it up. Your main focus should be to get out of ground works and that means getting things on your own sometimes.

I'm 31. You've summarised my intentions pretty well to be honest, I'm going to get stuck in and graft for a few months but as soon as possible I'm going to offer to contribute to my own training to make myself more useful to the firm. Already have driving license and B+E but getting my Class 2 HGV and 360 excavator CPCS should cost £2.5-3k, this is a good company to work for so with any luck the boss will see I'm keen to progress and will offer to go halves on the training cost with me, giving me a foot on the civil engineering ladder!

[blueg33]

GT03ROB said:

blueg33 said:

Tony Pidgeley started as a ground worker...............

He had quite a life if its who I think....from very humble beginings

Indeed. He was also a bit of a git! I worked for him for a while.

[mike74]

Darkslider said:

mike74 said:

Surely if you've got a lot of experience in joinery, electrics, plumbing and mechanics you could do something better paying and more skilled than a groundworker?

Either working for yourself or for someone else as an odd job/property maintenance man or concentrate on one of your existing skills and get the relevant qualifications to set yourself up properly as a sparks or plumber..

You'd think so, however I'm in a rural part of Wales and I've applied for the few general maintenance jobs as they come up with decent employers but either haven't been successful or I've been offered less pay than I'm on currently. I was offered a job at the local hospital but they wouldn't budge from the bottom of the band at £18k whereas I'm on 22 currently so that wasn't feasible.

I've considered setting up myself in a general property maintenance direction before, but having just taken out a mortgage on our first home and having accumulated £10k of unsecured debt in a previous toxic relationship I'm not in a position to be taking any leaps of faith currently.

Thanks for the insight though all very valid points that I've not overlooked so far!

I'm also in rural Wales (Anglesey) and both skilled tradesmen and general handymen are in huge demand here.

I'm trying to get quotes at the moment for a basic no frills refurb on a small, cheap 2up 2down and the few that have bothered coming to look at the job and provide a quote have left me gobsmacked with what they think they'll get away with charging me, basically a grand a day just for the labour and astronomical mark ups on materials.

I really can't see how you'd be short of work if you did set yourself up in property maintenance.

[Mining Subsidence Man]

It's fking hideous. We sometimes get people to hand trench. The guy that does it is a robot. A robot that smokes 500 rollies a day, but what a machine.

Do it for a while, then train as something else. Digger drivers seem to have a good life/job. The real money is made by having a load of monkeys doing work. An agency called a building company.