A Career In Plumbing?
I’ve had a number of emails from people looking to move into Plumbing so I thought I’d write a short narrative on the subject.
First off, if you are being drawn in to plumbing by tales of vast wealth, Porsche transit vans and solid gold Armani basin spanners, think again. The average wage of a plumber in the UK is £26K per annum. Not a bad wage really, but this ‘average’ is quite distorted. This figure includes the wages of Central London plumbers, it omits to mention that 95% of plumbers have been in the industry for more than 20 years, and to make this figure even more warped it includes Gas and Heating engineers, or ‘the Gentry’ as we mere mortals refer to them… when ‘rich-gits’ just doesn’t seem to hit the right note .
In a nutshell, if you’re currently stacking shelves at Tesco’s or your job seems to revolve around the phrase ”Would you like fries with that?” you’ll probably do better in plumbing… but you have as much chance of earning £26K within 3 years as I have of learning to braid snot over the weekend.
The other myth is that there is a nationwide shortage of plumbers. Yes, there are some areas of the country where plumbers are as thin on the ground as pink Unicorns but there are also many areas of the country that are positively awash with plumbers. So do a quick check. How many plumbers advertise each week in your local paper? Less than five and you might be in an area that has a shortage. More than 10 and there are lots of local plumbers already struggling. So do your research before taking the plunger.
If avarice and myth are not driving your venture into plumbing you could be onto a winner. So what’s the best way of going about it?
If you’re a school leaver the best route is to get taken on by a plumber, do your apprenticeship and get your NVQ 2 & 3. Finding a company to take you on can be difficult, so if you’re really interested in plumbing do a certificate level 2 in Plumbing as an evening class. For the first year this is exactly the same course as the NVQ 2, aside from an exam in employment law. It’s always possible to change from the Certificate to the NVQ during the 1st year and it gives you a whole 12 months to find an employer, whilst also showing how keen and committed you are.
There are umpteen schemes and grants available if you hunt around so the odds are you wont even have to pay for the 1st year of your course, and if you do it’s rarely more than about £400 for the year, which you can always off-set by applying for a career development loan.
The main advantages of doing it this way are: it’s cheap, you can do it two evenings a week - so you can earn money on the side and dip your toe into the world of plumbing rather than throw yourself in and hope it works out. You’ll be meeting people who are already working for plumbing companies which, assuming you don’t have the social skills of a damp log, should vastly increase your changes of getting an apprenticeship.
If you’re of a more mature nature it’s still worth trying to find a plumber to take you on as an apprentice. Yes, you’ll be on the minimum wage for at least two years but it’s the broadest introduction into the industry. More and more companies are realising that older applicants are often more reliable and committed than school leavers, so the chances of landing an apprenticeship are not as remote as you might think. Again, getting on a part time certificate level 2 course might be a better move than an intensive course. It can be done without leaving your current job, you have a year to reflect and gain more information, you get to meet other plumbers and decide if this really is for you… and all before you’ve spent a small fortune on intensive training.
So why do an intensive course? Well we did one because my mate’s working hours were so long that he didn’t have a chance to do an evening course, and because I was redundant and didn’t fancy a part-time course. It cost an arm and a leg and, on reflection, I don’t thing the cost was really justified. Yes, the training we received was superb, but the difference in price between a college course and an intensive course is just too large.
The most important thing to ask before signing up for an intensive course is what qualification will you get from it? There are still companies that just offer an internal ‘certificate’. This is very nice of them and no doubt the resulting certificate will look very impressive on the living room wall. Alas, the only people who’ll recognise the certificate are the guys that hand them out and you… because it’s hanging on your living room wall.
These days many of them talk about delivering an NVQ2 in a couple of months. I can’t see how this is possible as the NVQ requires supervised work based assessments, which would seem impossible to do unless you’re already working for a plumber, in which case why are you doing an intensive course? I suspect that they are just offering the ‘theory’ side of the NVQ (C&G 6129), which is a good certificate, but it’s not a full NVQ.
Many companies just mention that you’ll get a City and Guild qualification. This is better than their own internal certificates but what’s the exact qualification? For example a C&G 3791 is a ‘Profile of Achievement’. This is not exactly the most illuminating of titles and I suspect that if you took this certificate to a prospective employer the lights might go off all together.
Our experience was that, whilst the course we did was not recognised by the industry, it did cover everything you’d find in an NVQ2, without the work based assessment, and gave us enough experience to get started. However, of all the people who did the course at the same time as us, about 50% went back to their old jobs within 12 months and I dare say as little as 10-20% are still at it now.
If you are thinking of going self employed most of these intensive courses will deliver enough to get you up and running but you’re best off following this up with more ‘traditional’ training. If you want to work for someone else I’d first check if the certificate at the end of the course is something your prospective employer recognises and if they approve of intensive courses as the way to achieve these certificates - most don’t.
So, if you’re still determined to plumb your way to happiness, what can you expect from the job itself?
If you’re looking to go self employed then the chances are you’ll spend most of your time fitting bathrooms, changing taps and fixing leaks. Most intensive courses will prepare you for much of this, but for bathrooms you’ll also need basic joinery and tiling skills. What most courses tend to omit are the little things i.e. you’ll do a lot of your work in tiny, tiny little spaces, waste pipes come in a variety of types, which aren’t compatible with each other and Kitchen sinks are usually fitted by people who have no intention of every coming back to service or replace the taps. In other words, kitchen taps are an absolute b*tch to replace.
There’s a temptation, when you start-up, to do everything; the plumbing, the joinery, the tiling, the plastering, the electrics. I would suggest that you fight this temptation. When we started up the best bit of advice we received was to “get good at one thing first”. So we would do the plumbing and the joinery but bring in other tradesmen for everything else. The advantage of this was that we got to know a load of other tradesmen in our area, built up good working relationships with them and got referrals in return. We even got paid by the client for organising everyone else so, whilst we didn’t make quite as much money, we got to spend it on a pub lunch, whilst everyone else sweated away in bathrooms and lofts.
These days we tend to do most of our own tiling, only passing on the work if we’re too busy or if the tiling looks a bit complicated. We still pass on all the electrics, mainly because the testing equipment required by Part P costs an arm and a leg, our insurance would go up if we did move in to electrics and we really can’t be a*sed to spend ours days poking cables down stud walls and crawling through lofts.
We find plumbing fun and really enjoy the lifestyle but it’s not necessarily suited to everyone. For starters you can spend a lot of time working on your own. It can be stressful, kneeling in a strangers kitchen trying to look calm and knowledgeable as jets of water shoot over your head. It isn’t a job for big people as most of the places you find yourself working in are either small, tiny or decidedly compact. If you have any DIY to do, get it done before you become a plumber as once your career involves fitting kitchens and bathrooms all day, the last thing you want to do when you get home is fit kitchens and bathrooms all evening… and, most importantly, do you have to have the right ears for the job?
As a tradesman it’s pretty much d’rigour that you can tuck a pencil behind your ear and then, come wind, rain or hail said pencil remains firmly behind said ear. Alas, and to my eternal shame, I can’t do this. I can just about tuck a pencil behind my ear but I then need to walk around all day like a catwalk model if it’s to stand any chance of staying there. This can be pretty disconcerting to the unwary customer and it doesn’t do much for your plumbing either. I’m currently working on an idea involving a Velcro ear stud and a reel of sellotape … but it’s still in the design stage. So if you have ears of the Lineker-esque persuasion either turn your back on the tradesman’s life or carry an awful lot of pencils about your person.
