Late career change spark-up for Peter

APPRENTICE sparky Peter Winters is not your ordinary student.

The 50-year-old runs Winters Electrical Group with his older brother, Stephen, and has a successful IT career under his belt.

“The reality was that, in 27 years IT changed a lot,” he said. “My age and a change in culture made it increasingly harder, which is why I started the business with my brother.”

It was four years ago that Mr Winters began his electrician apprenticeship.

He is due to finish in July after years plying his trade at the Manunda industrial park workshop under his brother.

“We revert back to a couple of nine-year-olds every so often,” he said. “But you’ve got a job to do. Especially with electrical, there is no cutting corners. There is a very strong safety aspect and things have to be done correctly.”

Mr Winters is now preparing for his final test, called Capstone, and plans to specialise in off-grid systems and gain energy council accreditation.

He said the trade had been no walk in the park.

“I got tertiary qualifications in business computing and attempted a masters of e-commerce, but it was nothing like the Certificate III in electro technology. It was hard yakka,” he said.

“As a mature-age apprentice you tend to forget stuff that you learnt at school. If you came straight out of high school and were pretty reasonable at mathematics, you would walk it in.

“But it got to that gap from leaving high school. It was a bit of challenge.”

The brothers specialise in creating custom energy solutions for remote or “off the grid” commercial customers, such as cattle stations, ecotourism resorts and remote Queensland Parks and Wildlife offices.