The Construction Industry in England

If you do not have a sense of humour do not consider working in the construction industry as it is full of comedians.

It is the only industry where the customer (client) expects to pay for a Mini and get a Rolls Royce, and after agreeing the price for the purchase of the Rolls Royce then, half way through the delivery period, wants it gold plated at no extra cost and with no change to the delivery period.
Get real, it cannot be done, if quality is required then it has to be paid for.

In the construction industry today the busword is teamwork, on the bigger sites they even have team evenings which you will attend and you will enjoy, yet the reality is bully boy tactics. Package managers, which is the industry term for project and sub project supervisors, employed by the project management/main contractor whose sole aim in life is to get their bit done to program no matter what, doing the job properly is not an option nor a requirement, they are modern day slave drivers with little or no knowledge of their package trade/discipline, sites are staffed with cheap unskilled imported labour with little or no command of the English language, or contract labour, many of whom lack the proper skills, indeed few can read drawings those that can are charge-hands or more usually foremen, in many canteens you will have to speak a foreign language to get served, skilled tradesmen are used as factory production workers, there is no real training for apprentices in fact no real apprenticeships just those daft NVQs and modern apprenticeships.

Many installation electricians work in the construction industry; unfortunately in that industry in England today on large projects electricians are used as factory production line workers, instead of being given an area to install the complete electrical service they are given specific tasks. For example one team will install all the cable racking, another will install the cable tray, another the trunking, another the conduit, another the wiring in the trunking and conduit, another the connections and yet another team the testing of the circuits. It is debatable as to whether this task based system is efficient there can be little to recommend it, and against it is the boredom and demeaning of the electricians involved. It is not possible to have pride in one's work when part of this production line system, and it is highly recommended to avoid the big sites where these techniques are used. Try to transfer to smaller sites where you do the complete job or a complete area of larger jobs, or get into maintenance.