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Civil engineering: Career advice!

Hi there,

I'm a 23 year old who has been trying to work my way into engineering since I left school at 16. I have had various engineering roles such as looking after the quality assurance for an air conditioner manufacturing company which unfortunately despite by best efforts was only a temporary contract for 6 months.

I left school at 16 because I was at boarding school and was fed up with being treating like a child. Quite simply, despite being accepted to study a levels, I didn't want to study at the time. I wanted to experience work and earning my own money. The presiding thought was always to eventually return to my studies at a later date.

I grew up in Saudi Arabia as my dad was an engineer with British Aerospace, during this time I spent time with my dad's friends experiencing the various disciplines of engineering. I visited some of the largest oil processing facilities, some large building projects and also learnt about computer programming etc. The one discipline I realised I was most passionate about was civil engineering.

As such when I finished the temporary contract with the air conditioning company I decided that I would take a labouring job on a building site just so that I could start working my way up in the industry. Two months into the job, I started shadowing (bugging) the plumbers to teach me how to do what they did. By three months I was being used almost exclusively to carry out simple plumbing works and was promoted to a plumbers mate.

I continued this work and was planning to study plumbing at college until the economy collapsed and work dried up, I struggled on for a year and a half. Eventually I had to bite the bullet and get a secure full time role. Since early 2010 I have been working to survive and unable to plan towards any studies to improve myself. I have had various administration and retail roles during this time.

However, I am at the point in my life now where something has to give. My dad is now a project manager within mechanical engineering and he invited me to a night out with some of his companies clients on the weekend. It was a great night full of engineering talk as well as general comically mistaken comments due to the language barrier (they were Norwegian but spoke very good english). My dad later told me that the clients had asked about my availability for work and had assumed I was a practising engineer. This was two months ago, since then I have not been able to think about anything else other than getting into the industry I love.

Unfulfilled is the best way to describe how I feel in life at the moment, I have been making enquiries to the local college about the BTEC National Diploma in Construction and the built environment.

Sorry for the ramble above, I promise I am getting to the point now. I guess my question is simply, at 23 years old is it too late to start on the long road to qualifying to be a civil engineer? I know I am a hard worker and have more passion than most in ensuring things are done correctly. I am prepared to work for free to gain experience and learn and always put my all into everything I do.

I have looked at doing a degree through the Open University but this would take at least 4-5 years to complete. It is something I would consider doing whilst in the industry as I would want to complete a degree anyway.

Any advice, links to similar threads....ahem job offers! Would be very much appreciated.

Thanks
Chris

Reply 1

abcdefg1

Yeah, go for it. There are a couple of 24-25 year olds in my class who are doing this as a second degree because they couldn't find work related to their other degree. There is also one or two 30+.

You have family links + experience which will make getting a job pretty easy. I envy people with family links haha.

Make sure the qualification is accredited - that is really important. I'm from Scotland so I have no idea what a BTEC is. But the general route here tends to be MEng - that is 5 years in Scotland!

I'd look at access courses or degrees which include a foundation year. Again, I don't really know much about these.

Reply 2

bestofyou

Original post by chris_swallow88

Thanks
Chris

What did you get in your GCSEs?

If you have gcse math B or higher you would most likely get on to southampton's engineering foundation year. It is basically a BEng/MEng degree with an extra year at the start to bring you up to A-level maths/physics standard.

You could even apply for this year's entry as they could be in clearing.

Sheffield, Loughborugh and QMUL are three others I know do Fyears but not sure if they do civil or not.

I'd stay away from the BTEC at your age. Best to look for an access course with would be held in a better regard.

It is worth a try for the Fyear though, I got a place for September and only sent my applcation off last month.