We talked to Level 4 Facilities Management Apprenticeship graduate Gareth Nelson, who has completed two different apprenticeships almost 20 years apart.
Apprenticeships are increasingly popular among school leavers, but what many people don’t realise is that there are apprenticeships for every stage of your career. Gareth Nelson, a Facilities Manager with EDF Renewables based in Durham, has completed two very different apprenticeships in his career, almost two decades apart.
We spoke to Gareth about his most recent apprenticeship, the Level 4 Facilities Management Apprenticeship with Apprenticeships+. During his course, Gareth changed employers and took a break from his studies while he settled into his new role. Getting back to his studies proved challenging but, ultimately, his hard work and determination led him to achieve a triple Distinction in the Level 4 Facilities Management Apprenticeship.
What led you to do an apprenticeship with Capital City College?
I’m a mechanical electrical engineer by trade – that’s what I went into when I left school and did my first apprenticeship in. Then, in 2018 I started working with CBRE, first as a Facilities Coordinator and then as a Facilities Manager at Amazon fulfilment sites.
CBRE has very good personal progression paths and it was identified that, although I had a wealth of experience in some areas, I didn’t have qualifications in Facilities Management (FM) and Health and Safety. They looked into it and then offered me the Facilities Management Level 4 Apprenticeship through Capital City College Training (CCCT), which I began in September 2021.
How did you find returning to study?
From day one, it was an extreme culture shock for me. I hadn’t been in mainstream education for around 20 years – not since I completed my first apprenticeship at around 18 years old. I found getting the brain matter moving very difficult to start off with, but wanted to give it a go and see where it could lead. I quite quickly developed a good skill set for approaching the assignment and the project work that was set.
How did you develop your skill set for returning to education?
I’m very organised and structured, so I was very focused and strict with myself from the start. We’d do lessons with Rod, our lecturer, and he’d present everything and then he’d give us the assignments at the end. I was always keen to set a timetable up and get straight onto it – I think that helped me adapt pretty quickly.
The thing that made it easier is that all the assignments and all the projects are based on what you should be doing at work on a daily basis. You can use your company, your job and your role as an example – so sourcing information is relatively easy. You didn’t have to go and do a lot of research and dig around to find the answers – they were pretty much on your own company’s web pages or SharePoint or within the job role that you were doing daily.
How did your work life change while you completed the course?
I was working for CBRE on the Amazon contract when I started the apprenticeship. I was enjoying it but I was itching for a change. There were a few roles in other areas that they could offer me but they didn’t quite tick all the boxes because I wanted something within the facility management structure.
I was at the halfway point in the course and I’d got the projects and the assignments done and I’d passed them all. It’s at this point in the course that I transitioned over to EDF renewables.
How did changing jobs mid-course impact your studies?
I’ll be honest – changing jobs in the middle of the course was difficult. When I went into my new role in October 2022, I explained that I was doing the apprenticeship, and they [EDF] said they were more than happy to support me in getting to that end point – which was really good to hear. I thought I could hit the ground running and just carry on with the course and learn my new role.
Initially, I spoke with Rod and asked him to hold off triggering me for a few months. [When apprenticeship students have completed their projects and assignments, their course leader triggers the next stage, the End Point Assessment (EPA).]
We agreed that I’d have a break until January 2023 as there were still other members of my cohort finishing off assignments and projects. It got to January and life was still very busy and hectic as I was still learning my new role and travelling around the country. I knew that I didn’t have the time to dedicate to the next phase of the course and thought that if I tried to push forward with it, I’d be setting myself up for failure.
I had a good in-depth chat with Rod and I told him that I needed to stay stepped away. I hoped that I could get to a point where I could dedicate some time to getting the final 8000-word project and presentation done. From the point that they trigger you for the EPA, you only get three months, and I didn’t want any time constraints or pressures.
Rod stayed in contact and kept checking in with me, but every time, my reasoning was that I was too busy. I had more responsibility and was overseeing a whole team – in my mind, completing the course seemed like an impossible task.
How did you come to complete your course?
In October 2023, Rod told me that if I didn’t trigger soon, I’d lose everything I’d achieved on the course so far. I thought that I was better off just going for it rather than letting it end there and losing all the hard work that I’ve done so far.
We agreed that Rod would trigger me for the EPA the following January, along with his existing cohort. In the meantime, I spoke with my line manager who was very supportive and encouraged me to block out some time in my calendar and pull myself away from work so that I could complete the course.
In January 2024, we had an initial interview with the End Point Assessment Organisation where they passed over the project and presentation details and went through how the next three months would run. At first, I found it hard to get the brain matter working after such a long break, so I was pulling out my old assignments and reading through everything. But I very quickly got back into the mentality of putting time in the diary and getting things done each week. I had to be strict with myself and not look at work emails or get sidetracked doing other things.
Once again, it started off quite difficult and then it just started to flow. Rod was having weekly catch-ups with me to make sure that I was happy, on track and had the support that I needed. Within the first two weeks, I’d written 4000 words out of 8,000 so I was making good progress. When I’d finished the project, I sent it over to Rod, who sent it back within a day and said he couldn’t see any errors or anything missing and he thought it was ready to be submitted.
How did you feel about your End Point Assessment?
I was with a cohort of people who were new to me. They were all sending their projects to get results back and sharing their work. When I was reading their assignments and projects, they always seemed so much better. I found myself thinking “They’ve really touched on some good points there,”, “I wish I’d done that” or “They’ve explained that really well.”I never thought that mine quite hit that criteria. But I suppose you maybe don’t with your own. My final project went away to get marked by the awarding body. It was the worst week waiting for it to come back. In the end, Rod emailed me to let me know that I’d got a Distinction!
From that point, I had a month to get the presentation together. I felt like I knew what they were looking for and was quite comfortable with this part of the course because I deliver presentations quite often in my role at EDF. I spent some time putting it all together and ran through it with Rod. He gave me a few pointers around things to include what they might ask in the question-and-answer interview. I took it all on board, and then went through and did my 15-minute presentation based on my slides and the 45-minute question and answer session over Teams. They ask you questions on your presentation, but also just around your general knowledge of the whole subject. I think it’s a way of finishing everything off, to make sure that you’ve understood what you’ve spent the last few years of your life doing. At the time, I thought that I might have got carried away in a few areas and gone a bit too in-depth, but overall I felt that I had done okay.
About a week later I got an email from the awarding body to tell me that my results were online. I went and had a look and, lo and behold, I had Distinctions in all three areas. They awarded me a Distinction on my project, a Distinction on the presentation, and then a Distinction on my question and answers interview as well.
That’s an amazing set of results. How did you feel?
I was absolutely blown away. Rod was very happy for me because he knew how hard it had been transitioning through jobs stepping away and then coming back to it. What should have been an 18-month course turned into nearly a two-and-a-half-year course in the end.
Rod was ecstatic, and he and Jerome, who is the head of the FM Department, got in touch to tell me that I was the first student from CCC to get three Distinctions in this particular course.
It’s a credit to the college, Rod and the support I got. Rod presents to so many cohorts at the same time, all working in different job roles within FM and in slightly different areas. To then unionise it to make it all relevant for everyone is no easy feat. I have to give credit to him, he is a really good lecturer.
What did you like most about your course?
The thing I think I liked best about it was the extra in-depth knowledge that it gave me about Facilities Management. It’s a fast-growing sector now, and I thought I understood it, but as I did the course, I realised how much bigger it was than I initially thought.
How did your cohort support each other throughout the course?
We set up a Teams group where we could ask each other questions, and we got together for the lessons and things like that. Initially, the majority of the cohort was employed by CBRE, which was great. I could reach out to them and speak with them, we did presentations to each other as a group and asked questions afterwards.
Did doing the apprenticeship influence your decision to change jobs during the course?
Yes, it certainly gave me extra confidence. I’d built up so much extra knowledge and I think it helped me in the interview. It was so fresh in my mind, that I could just go into it and hit every single point that the interview panel were looking for in a Facilities Manager. I think it also helped that they could see that I was very keen on personal development and getting the right qualifications to give them the best of me in that role.
How has what you’ve learned in your apprenticeship impacted your day-to-day working life?
It’s had nothing but a positive effect. CBRE was very structured and very good within FM. When I moved into EDF Renewables, they didn’t have an FM department as such. This was a new thing that they wanted to build in-house. They needed somebody who could hit the ground running and get the ship in order.
The knowledge and experience that I gained from doing the qualification, made it very easy to drop into that role and quickly identify the needs of the business. It’s still working today – they’re still seeing good progress and good change within the organisation and the business around FM.
What would your advice be to someone who was thinking about starting this sort of apprenticeship?
You need to have an understanding that it’s not an easy road. It takes a lot of time and dedication, and you’ve got to be prepared to be strict with yourself. You can’t let your work life take over, where you don’t set that time aside to get things done – but you also need an understanding that outside and away from work, you are going to have to spend time on it, to focus and get it done.
What’s next for you?
That is a good question. Well, the Level 4 Facilities Management Apprenticeship is recognised by the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management (IWFM), so I am looking to do the Level 6 IWFM qualification next, or the NEBOSH, which is an in-depth Health and Safety qualification.
If you’re working in Facilities Management and are looking to gain qualifications that will enhance your career, then take a look at our Facilities Management courses and apprenticeship training. Please speak to your employer about training with us.
If you’re currently unemployed and are interested in completing an apprenticeship, take a look at our apprenticeship vacancies.
