Graduate Electrical Engineer

Name Luke Mainwaring
University attended Cardiff University
Degree obtained BEng Electrical/ Electronic Engineering
Age 26

Luke rejoined Corus as a graduate in 2004, having already spent four years on an electrical apprentice scheme and after finishing his BEng Electrical/Electronic Engineering degree.

Starting out

After qualifying as an electrician and having finished my four-year electrical apprenticeship with Corus in 2000, I studied for a BEng Electrical/Electronic Engineering degree at Cardiff, sponsored by Corus. I rejoined the company as a graduate in 2004.

I returned to Corus because I enjoyed my experiences as an apprentice and electrician. I believe that if you work hard enough, opportunities will come and, if opportunity doesn’t knock, you need to build a door!

At Corus there are a wide variety of departments to choose from, with opportunities to move around. For the Electrical discipline, the work can vary from working on 11-Kv systems down to milliamps.

The first few months were very interesting, gaining background on the department and systems in place, although being in a position I would normally aspire to was a little strange.

A variety of experiences

Since rejoining I have been on various training programmes, including Business Essentials and Engineering. Both passed on knowledge of systems and decision processes. I found that the time spent on these broke up the normal daily work quite nicely and provided opportunities for keeping up to date with other graduates and their progress within the company.

I have been involved in numerous challenging projects, but the most interesting was the installation of a 20 MW generator. An installation of this kind does not happen too often. I found this to be a steep learning curve and enjoyed working with the different people involved, including installation engineers, contractors and even a student.

The future

Even though I have come from an engineering background, I feel that I would like to go into management and eventually gain a position in which crucial decisions are made. I believe this is definitely possible within this company.