I have just finished a series of courses with Tradeskills4U and would like to post some feedback for others to get an idea of what they are like. First a little background, I have been working with computers for the last 12 years and have got to the point where I really need a change of scenery. It gets a bit much when all you do all day is stare at a screen so I wanted to do something that would get me out and about. Why electrics? I have been interested in renewable energy for a while and have been looking into fitting solar water panels on my own house, what I soon realised was if you want to do anything in this area, pretty soon you have to get involved with the electics, solar water needs pumps and controllers and they all have to be wired in. Once I started looking into it I decided that I would quite like to get the whole wiring side as it looked a lot more interesting than what I was doing at the moment.
So after a bit of reasearch I settled on doing a course with tradeskills4u, the main reason I went for them is that they were not too far away and I could do the course while still being able to get home in the evenings. So not very scientific, it was just a question of choosing the one that was nearest. I checked out a few other places and prices seem to vary but the length of the courses seems to be pretty similar, I also liked there site as there was more information on it than just about all the others. I could have gone for one of the courses run by a trade body like the NIC but I called them a couple of times and got conflicting information, where as tradeskills were much easier to deal with, I called them up and was asked questions about my background and they recomended a series of courses which I booked there and then.
One thing I should point out is that although my knowledge of domestic wiring is limited, before I drifted into computers I was a mechanical engineer working on the design and construction of large generators, so I have a pretty solid background in engineering, although all of it on the mechanical side, I am not the sort of person who has never picked up a screwdriver before.
I did the four day foundation, which was two days of practical wiring followed by two days of circuit testing. I then did my C&G 2382 17th edition, and my part p domestic installers course.
Overall impression of the course was very good, the quality of the teaching is very high especially as you have a very wide range of abilities. I would say that about 75% of those on the course had some previous experience in wiring, some were electricians who had been working in the trade for years but needed the qualifications, some were kitchen and bathroom fitters, some office site managers. Some were people like myself who have some practical knowledge but not in electrics, and some were complete novices who had never done anything like this before, although I would say that they were in the minority. Overall the spread of knowledge was quite wide but they managed to keep the whole thing moving a a good pace, quickly working out who was going to need more help and keeping a close eye on what was going on.
Beacause they were quite booked up I ended up dowing my 17th first then my part p, whereas it would have made more sense to do it the other way round. These two courses are craming exercises, what you learn on the 17th is how to find your way around the book and answer questions, it is all theory and dosen't feel like it has anything to do with wiring, we could have been studying hierogliphics. I am used to wading through computer manuals and using code that I don't understand and this was a similar exercise. I enjoyed the part p as it was a little more practical with a lot more real world examples of how the building regs apply to situations.
Overall impression of the course was very good, the quality of the teaching is very high and the lecturers teaching skills are excellent, we all learned a lot in a very short space of time. My only criticism, would be that I think there should be a more practical element to these courses. I would like to see the inspection and test expanded to say five days instead of two, with lots of testing on dodgy setups. But this is something that would need to be bought in as a compulsory element, trade skills I am sure have to compete on price against other similar courses and so if there prices are higher than others they would loose business. I think the best way to do this would be to make it a compulsory part of registering with NIC/Napit ect. that way all these centers would have to offer it as part of the package.
Overall then I would give Tradeskills a mark of 9/10, they run very good intensive courses, they are very pleasant to deal with and I think that the courses represent pretty good value for money and I only knock a point off because of the appaling quality of there coffee machine
If you are looking around at doing one of these courses, I hope that helps.
Cheers
To cite an example of what I meant (I hope) - many years ago I took an ACU motorbike course prior to starting to ride on the road. I passed the course with flying colours but didn't really start to learn how to survive on the road until after the course. It wasn't that the course didn't teach me exactly what it set out to, it was just that there was so much more that is gained from experience including the swerve balls fired at us by others.
