Putting people on the right path
Tom keen to help engineers of the future
Tom McBrearty wants to find the right path for the engineers of the future.
The general manager of East Kilbride and District Engineering Group Training Association (EKGTA) has been helping youngsters forge a career path since taking on the role in 2011.
“People say they want to be an engineer and don’t know what type they want to go into,” he said.
“They imagine a guy with an oil can who goes in and fixes cars – but that’s not what we do.”
What they do is build a future for young engineers across Scotland.
“Every year we are asked to attend school careers events and last year we did 37 stretching from October to February,” Tom continues.
“We go out to advise kids on what type of engineering best suits them and how to get into a career in engineering.
“As that is going on we go to all our member companies and establish their training needs. Once these exercises are complete we ask people to apply and go forward from there.”
Advisers work with young people right to the end of their apprenticeship.
“For the next three years our assessors will go out every 12 weeks,” Tom says. “We support them right through. “Some also come back for the management programme and get another qualification.
“It’s amazing the amount of people are senior managers now that come back to our end of year awards. I think that is really inspiring for youngsters to see.
“We find it good for the kids. When you leave schools you are a rabbit in the headlights. When they leave here they are ready for work.”
Tom served his apprenticeship as an electrical engineer and worked his way up through the ranks to managing director with companies in Paisley and Glasgow. He moved to East Kilbride 42 years ago to join.
“The board of directors had been looking for someone to take the job,” he said. “I had just finished a job I had been working on in Irvine.
“I was doing my own thing and was asked if I would be interested in putting myself forward as general manager.
“This is the first time I have worked in the same town that I lived in. In my previous careers I had travelled around a lot. This is definitely better.
“One of my previous jobs I was working nearly every day and up at 6am to head to the airport and wasn’t back in until 9pm on Friday. “The position here is perfect.” Having worked with big companies beforehand, Tom was not fazed by his new role.
“I once had responsibility for three sites,” he said. “The turnover for these sites was around £90million with around 400 employees.
“Any positions that I’ve had I’ve always been involved in training and promoting resources.
“This is on a smaller scale but involves a lot of the sames tasks. I’ve really enjoyed it.”