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• Intake increases once again
• Process begins at open evening on the 23rd January, 2014
• New technician apprenticeship added to advanced and higher schemes
An open evening from 4.00pm to 7.00pm at the BAWA Centre, Southmead Rd, Filton on Thursday 23rd January, 2014 marks the start of the recruitment of this year’s intake of apprentices to GKN Aerospace in Bristol. This year, the company will start 48 new apprentices, increasing the annual intake once again from 44 in 2013. The scheme is also being extended to add technician apprenticeships to the advanced and higher level schemes provided in previous years. This year’s September recruits will take the total number of apprentices in training at the Bristol sites next academic year to 129.
John Pritchard, Managing Director, GKN Aerospace – Filton comments: “Our apprenticeship scheme is at the heart of our success as a company and offers an incredible career opportunity for our recruits. This new technician apprenticeship adds a new option for our recruits . . . .But whichever apprenticeship they take on, each individual is taught state-of-the-art aerospace manufacturing skills, learning how to work with the latest exotic metals and high performance composite materials. By the second year of their training they are starting to make a real contribution to our work designing, developing and manufacturing complex wing structures for the world’s leading military and commercial aircraft.”
Steve Colebrook, General Manager at the Western Approach facility continues: “Our wing structures engineering and manufacturing skills are second to none and, having started my own career as an apprentice, I know that the contribution these young people make to our long term business success. It is a true pleasure to see each individual develop their skills and confidence through our ever-growing apprenticeship programme.”
The newly introduced technician apprenticeship trains each individual for vital technical support roles such as maintaining the cutting edge manufacturing and assembly equipment and using state of the art technology to perform rigorous testing and measuring of complex wing structures, ensuring they meet critical manufacturer’s specifications.
GKN Aerospace has a reputation across the global aerospace sector for its engineering innovation and technological expertise. This is very evident at the two Bristol sites which represent the centre of the company’s international wing structures business. Today, the people at these sites design, manufacture and assemble complex wing structures for aircraft such as Dassault’s new Falcon 5X super mid-sized business jet, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, Airbus’s ubiquitous A330 and A320 aircraft, the awe inspiring, double-deck A380 airliner, the A400M military freighter aircraft and the pioneering, 53% composite A350XWB passenger aircraft.
GKN Aerospace, the aerospace arm of the UK’s international engineering group GKN, is a major UK industrial success story. The operation is one of the world’s largest independent first tier suppliers to the global aviation industry and is a market leader in all its areas of business. Its turnover has more than doubled since 2005 rising to £1.8bn, and its workforce has increased to12,000 people in 35 sites across 3 continents.
Adam Fracz, Apprentice of the year, 2013, at work in Filton.