While most of Mount Cotton is still asleep and the roosters are only just starting to crow, Alistair Harris is already on the road, heading out to service the chicken farms that keep the district running.
Every shed relies on a controlled system of motors, augers and temperature sensors, automated to heat the shed when it turns cold and cool it down again the moment it gets too hot.
A chicken doesn’t care if you’re a qualified electrician or an apprentice but for Alistair working on the farm was the best grounding for his Capstone Assessment.
He has spent the past four years building toward this point through his UEE30820 Certificate III in Electrotechnology Electrician, and in the last three weeks that four-year effort finally came to a head.
The Capstone Assessment is the final hurdle of the UEE30820 Certificate III in Electrotechnology Electrician, a block that asks apprentices to recall four years of learning and prove all of it under strict exam conditions.
Alistair said other apprentices and past students had warned him it would be extremely stressful.
He spent the first week of the block refreshing his notes from across the whole qualification before sitting the theory exam and the practical side never worried him nearly as much.
The theory exam was the part that kept him up at night, since failure would have meant sitting the entire capstone block again from scratch.
Alistair was signed off this month, closing out four years of training and marking his official move from apprentice to qualified electrician.
“Good to finally be done, definitely. I think I’ll miss coming to blocks and learning stuff, but I’m learning stuff every day anyway. Feels good to be done, that’s for sure,” Alistair said.
Major Training runs its Certificate III in Electrotechnology Electrician (UEE30820) apprenticeships in two-week blocks, a structure Alistair said played a big part in how well the content actually stuck.
“Because you’re not coming here once a week, being here for two weeks, you definitely sit down and get it in your head over and over again doing all the tests and practising stuff.
“I think it’s a better way to make sure you can hold onto the information,” he said.
With his Certificate III in Electrotechnology Electrician (UEE30820) now signed off, Alistair is not expecting his day-to-day work to change all that dramatically in the short term.
“There’s definitely a million avenues out there that can pretty much fit whatever you want.
“If you want to go away to the mines you can do that.
“If you want to stay around home you can always just do house jobs, or if you want to expand your knowledge into further technology stuff like the PLCs and computers, there’s multiple, multiple pathways to go down,” he said.
Whether it’s maintaining equipment on a chicken farm, supporting heavy industry, or working in advanced automation, the qualification Alistair has earned opens doors across the electrical trade.
Where Alistair takes his UEE30820 Certificate III in Electrotechnology Electrician from here is entirely up to him.
Though for now, it’s the chicken coop controllers of Mount Cotton welcoming their qualified electrician back to the chicken farms.
