Skills for the future: How an apprenticeship is a career for life with Downer

For many teenagers, deciding your career can be daunting. With Downer, a skills-based apprenticeship can be a career for life. We spoke with some of our longest and newest serving trades people to find out how their skills-based apprenticeship has served them.

In 1972, Peter Hale joined Downer’s Maryborough Rail Facility. At the end of this first day, he went home to his parents saying, “Downer could build anything – trains, locomotives, or sugar milling equipment”. Peter followed a career with Downer and in 2022, some 50 years later, Peter is retiring from our business.

Local manufacturing is a priority for Downer and a capability we only want to grow. As such, we need skills based colleagues and this National Skills Week, it’s good to remember the importance of trade skills.

We continue to bring on apprentices with 52 currently at our Maryborough Rail Facility, including Harrison and Jackson Kemp who commenced with us in January 2022.

While they formally commenced their apprenticeship in January, they were known to us having competed school-based work experience.

“Everyone outside was saying we’d be sweeping floors [during our work experience]”, said Harrison.

“But day 1 we were put to work. We were given spanners and sockets and asked ‘Hey, can you do this?’ and so we said ‘yeah’ and so then we were told to give it a go.

“People always kept an eye on us, but if we thought we could do it, we were given an opportunity to just go an do it.”

Shellah also started in January 2022, commencing her apprenticeship as a Fitter and Turner. “I love it. It’ so hands on. I can get so dirty,” she laughed. “I wanted to go into this industry. I wanted some sort of hands on trades type role and was looking for a while before my school in Hervey Bay sent me the details for Downer.”

When speaking about doing an apprenticeship, and especially those in male dominated fields as a young woman, Shellah has some terrific advice, “Don’t be scared. Don’t be afraid to do it. If you want it, just take the leap”.Outside of apprentices, we also bring on cadets and trainees such as Kaylah. Kaylah is a Mechanical Designer Trainee on a three-year program. This opportunity helped her secure work in Maryborough, after her and her husband relocated from Bundaberg. “If not Downer, where in Maryborough would I get a job?” she asks.

Kaylah always had an interest in design, and she designs and sells her own earrings. Now she’s designing train parts for Queensland passengers.

“I love the position” she said. “I love getting to learn new things every day. I have a really good supervisor which helps, and everyone is really nice too. Downer is a really good company.”

If the stories of our current apprentices and trainees appeal to you, or a 50-year career does, we recruit for our apprentices twice a year—October and April.

This National Skills Week, think of Downer when you think about your future.