From Apprentice to Field Service Engineer: Richard's Story

Stannah have a long history of apprentice recruitment, with many of our 300 lift engineers representing our 11 service branches all over the UK, starting out in the Stannah apprenticeship scheme. Just like Richard Gascoyne, a field service engineer in our South Midlands and Home Counties service branch.

Richard started his apprenticeship with Stannah in 2009, having seen an advertisement at the college where he was studying. Whilst at Stannah, Richard has completed his apprenticeship, with NVQ level 2 and 3 in engineering and NVQ level 3 in lifts.

As a field service engineer, Richard services and maintains all types of lifts within the area covered by his service branch, also carrying out minor repairs and assisting other engineers when required. Richard explains what a typical week involves:

“I tend to schedule all lift servicing in advance, arranging access to the sites and making sure that the time is convenient to the customer. You also have to schedule and prioritise any immediate lift call-outs and where required rebooking services with customers. For the service visits, I attend the site to service the lift, checking with the customers on how the lift has been behaving since the last service, run through all the safety checks, service the lift equipment, and investigate any issues where required.

It is great working for Stannah and I am still learning new things. I have found that with some products once you find the trick to them, they are relatively easy and enjoyable to work on, and for other products on the face of it seem quite simple can in-fact be very challenging. As an engineer, you need to be able to adapt quickly to changing circumstances - every day is different.”

So what advice would Richard give to someone starting out at Stannah? “Ask plenty of questions. It may seem silly, but the more questions you ask the better and deeper your understanding of different products will be. Grab any chance to work with as many different engineers as you can as this can help broaden your approach to different situations.”

Could you be the next repair engineer to join Stannah? Stannah is celebrating 150 years since Joseph Stannah established the company in 1867 and we remain as committed as ever to the recruitment, and development of talented people – find out about our careers here.