Maintenance as a Career
Should you like to repair and make things, work with your hands, don’t mind getting grubby, like technology and don’t want to sit at in a cubical, you should seriously look at a career in maintenance.
There are numerous different types of maintenance personnel, such as electrical, mechanical, aircraft, avionics, helicopter and building maintenance.
Lots of maintenance employees work in production factories, which includes automotive, aviation, food and medical plants to fix, set up and take care of hardware. The bulk of their time is spent on working to keep hardware up and working mainly because it’s very costly for factories to have lengthy amounts of outages.
As a result of rapid developments in technologies, machines are becoming more sophisticated so it’s important that maintenance staff are computer and electronic knowledgeable.
If you are pondering a profession in maintenance there are generally a couple of ways to get maintenance training. The 1st is to enroll in a local community college offering maintenance education that include hands on training, classroom directions and text book exercises.
The second is to get into an apprenticeship program where you work with an expert maintenance mechanic who will educate you to complete certain assignments while you attend classes at evenings or weekends to attain your certificate or license. Apprenticeship programs are ordinarily offered by employers who will have a shared program with local unions or local community colleges.
Prerequisites to get into an apprenticeship program are less strict than local community colleges, but, more corporations are mainly accepting people who have a high school diploma. They also want high school students who have taken some trade classes like blue print reading, mechanical drawing, computer programming, wood working, and auto repair.
Schooling in aircraft maintenance is essentially the most stringent mainly because you will have to pass examinations to become licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), you must be at least eighteen years of age, have a high school diploma or G.E.D., be fluent in English and possess the required fundamental technical skills. To become a licensed aircraft mechanic the FAA requires students to finish at least of 1, 900 class hours.
Becoming a maintenance electrician the majority of states and local governments require a license, then again, requirements vary by state or local area. Electricians need to pass a test testing their practical knowledge of electrical basic principle, local/state electric and building codes and the National Electrical Code.
Incomes for maintenance employees vary by industry, geography and job class. Novice maintenance workers can expect earn from $14 to more than $20 by the hour in addition to benefits. Personnel with over 5 years expertise can make over $30 by the hour.
Maintenance personnel tend to be older males who will begin to retire by the bucket load within the next several years which will result in a scarcity of personnel to fill these jobs. Younger individuals want to work in clean surroundings and tasks that are less physically challenging. Also, younger people tend to stay away from technical careers involving mathematics and science.
Dexter Johnson is a teacher specializing in Maintenance Training.