Renishaw takes home four engineering apprenticeship awards

Oliver Rodway, a Technical apprentice at Renishaw, won the Mechanical Computer Aided Design (CAD) Award and picked up the Apprentices' Apprentice of the Year Award, voted for by his peers, before taking home the biggest award of the night, the GET Apprentice of the Year Award.

Ed Benjamin, a Manufacturing apprentice with the company, also picked up the Most Improved Apprentice Award for his efforts throughout the year.

Oliver spoke of his surprise on the evening, saying, “I was shocked to have won all of my nominations; I was only hopeful of winning the mechanical CAD award as that is the path I wish my career to follow and I tried very hard in the module, helping others along the way. I had quite a good understanding of all my units last year, therefore finished fairly quickly which allowed me to help my peers, which in turn meant they voted me as apprentices' apprentice. In this time I also machined and coded a couple of end of year projects which used all the skills I had learnt over the year; this may have led to being voted apprentice of the year.”

Ed said, “Winning the award was one of the proudest moments of my life. In my time at GET I improved a great deal. This was through my determination to better myself and gather new skills. At the beginning of the apprenticeship I had no experience in the industry. I only had interest and the desire to work within it. But through my persistence in the practical side of the course, and extensive revision in the theory side of the course, I managed to achieve to a high standard.”

Renishaw is dedicated to bringing the next generation of engineers into the company, and last year had a record 111 apprentices across its five Gloucestershire sites and at Gloucestershire Engineering Training.

GET has been designing and delivering engineering and training programmes to large and small employers for the past 37 years, and is the only training facility in Gloucestershire that is run by the manufacturing and engineering industry for the engineering industry. It trains apprentices in mechanical, electrical, maintenance, welding and fabrication and also offers a dual skill programme for those employers who require multi-skilled individuals.