Maintenance electrician

Hi there, this is my first post on here. I signed up a long time ago but never really came on here. Anyway, I have been told about a possible job opportunity as an Electrician for a local whisky distillery and which would be a great oppertunity for me but I’m not very experienced in industrial/commercial areas. I am time served 6 years but the vast majority of those 6 years (plus 4 for apprenticeship) I have been doing domestic work. My main question is all the motor work, control circuits etc as daunting as it sounds or am I over thinking things and should just go for the job? My main worry is if not know what was wrong and be holding up production and look like an idiot!

thanks in advance!

Is this a solitary position or team member?  

Solitary then suggest avoid until more experience obtained, team then you’ll have a fall back, however you’ll have to learn fast so depends how good you are at taking onboard the information you are given. Ultimately it’ll boil down to your tenacity? 

if it stops working, look for where the smoke came from, find the burnt out part and replace it

Andy™ said:

if it stops working, look for where the smoke came from, find the burnt out part and replace it

Click to expand...

Spoken by a true maintenance man!  

It’s a solitary position. They have an unreliable outside contractor just now and may be looking to take on their own electrician soon. I pick things up pretty quickly just don’t want to look like an idiot if I’m unsure and the job I’m in just now has no real potential of getting experience in that area. I just wasn’t sure if I was thinking it would be more difficult than it would actually be, as Andy suggests

Sharpend said:

Ultimately it’ll boil down

Click to expand...

In a whiskey distillery

Rob_the_rich said:

In a whiskey distillery

Click to expand...

it's NOT whiskEy

it's Whisky

He's in Scotland

steptoe said:

it's NOT whiskEy

it's Whisky

He's in Scotland

Click to expand...

Thats important. 

Take the E out of maintenance and you’ll speak Scottish! 

Humblest apologies to John Barleycorn, may his great prosperity ne'er fail in auld Scotland.

its easy to remember

there's no E is Scotland

but there is in Ireland

Glen I have to say , maintenance is a whole different game .

Even an experienced maintenance guy would take time to get used to the special  plant etc that you'd find in a whisky distillery .

Most stuff there will be 3ph  X 415V   ,  motors  starters ,  lot of pumps I would imagine etc .   

If you're to be the one & only sparks there you'll be flying by the seat of your pants  .     A bit of installation won't be in twin & earth  it'll be steel conduit  , SWA  , SY Flex   ,steel trunking  etc  ...  would you be OK with that  ?  

Sorry if I'm somewhat negative  but you might be out of your comfort zone . 

Have a look here

I appreciate its completely different to what I am doing now, I have Experian every with SWA and 3phase etc it’s just the fault finding on motors, starter circuits etc that I’m not so sure about. It is a big change from what a domestic spark but I’d like a bit of a change, a different challenge. The job hasn’t been advertised yet but will be soon so I’m going to have a good think about it.

I appreciate your comment, I wasn’t looking for everything to be positive, I am just looking to find out whether it’s worth making the jump or carry on crawling through lofts for lettuced money! 

That link is great Tony S. I will read through that today.

Glenn Palmer said:

whether it’s worth making the jump or carry on crawling through lofts for lettuced money! 

Click to expand...

The more insulation they insist upon piling into lofts ...the less willing I am crawl in amongst it .  

Crawling around in lofts!

I gave that up a long time ago.....unless it's a very quick and very very easy run !

my risk assessment states that 'I  consider it a  risk so I aint   doin it, '!    ". end of!

life is too short and I'm not intending to shorten it even more

My suggestion is to be upfront about you current experience and let them know you are willing to learn as its your career development plan.

If you get an interview, see if you can get a tour of the plant. 

You will probably see general power distribution for lighting and power for machinery etc and then i expect there will be control panels for the process machinery. If you are expected to know what goes on inside them, they are very plant specific so anyone going in will need to learn the plant, its just the more experience you have the quicker you pick it up. You will need to be able to read drawings of the power side and control side of the plant and probably be able trace faults from the inputs, (pressure sensors, temp sensors, any other sensors they have) plus if they are bottling, then again there will be motors, and stuff moving pretty fast, and outputs from control system. These are likely to be relays , contactors, variable speed drives,  

Sometimes companies have tech support via phone or logging onto the plcs - that would help.

Generally though the vast majority of faults like 80% will be common things like, sensor failures, motor overload trips, lights going out, employees breaking stuff .

Good luck

get job, have a good look around the plant then read a lot of stuff on internet. Should be able to make a reasonable stab at the job of you get clued up before things break!

I did maintenance for a short time ,  one thing I learned was  always grab the operator of the machine /plant /whatever .

Often they will say there was a flash from that box  or  ..it was working fine until  the water that water leak went into the main panel  etc .   

To follow on from Deke, the process operator can be either be your best friend or your worse enemy. Down time equals “bum on seat time”, some will take advantage of this. On a bagging plant I could guarantee the packaging machine would breakdown at 07:15 and I was getting fed up with it. A quick word with the charge hand got it sorted, he phones me when he stops the machine, I enter it in to the machine down time log. His lads get a tea break and I don’t have to get off my arse.

Covering up for process operator errors also pays dividends. You book it as a fault and you’ve got the operator on you’re side.

One thing you have to do is learn how the process works.

I am a maintenance electrician on a busy port. Normal everyday work is things like changing lamps, sockets etc, small installs and project work, street lighting etc. Checking fire alarms and emergency lighting etc. Nothing to it.....

But then out of the blue a phone call at 2am thats where the maintenance spark earns his wages, when stuff breaks you have to be able to come up with solutions quickly and get things going again. 

I doubt that someone could go straight from housebashing into maintenance work. Even more so when you are the only one with no one to show you the ropes and have a chance to settle in. Best of luck with your endeavours.