My Career Dreams

Project Manager. That is it. I currently work within the telecommunications industry and my dream when I left the Army was to be a project Manager. When I first joined the Telecoms industry I knew that I was going to love my job for a long time. It just seemed to fit so well with me. I enjoyed being outside, I enjoyed finding solutions to sometimes quite complex tasks.

There is a bedding in period or the Apprenticeship 12 months mandatory to complete whereby we had to do a bunch of modules and upload all sorts. For me, who is Autistic it was quite the challenge as I struggled with doing the educational side of telecoms. I understand that it was mandatory and it helped me in the long run, but I know that I learn best by doing rather than reading it. However, I do enjoy listening to things like The Rest is History podcast and some other podcasts too.

I joined the company as a fibre jointer. I was super happy when it came through by email I was going to be a jointer. However, Jointing started off slowly. As an apprentice the 1st 12 weeks or so you are in a classroom learning the trade and network layout. However, once I finished I moved onto the Stafford patch under a manager called Matt. Matt was eccentric but fun. I was eased into life as a jointer and put to work on new sites. New sites are laborious and repetitive but easy to learn, pick up the job role and is a place where you can make mistakes with jointing and break fibres because a lot of Stafford was blown fibre. So essentially if you blow in the fibre from the 'street' to the home, at the home if it broke you could blow more fibre through and this was a great way to learn splicing in the real world with wind and the rain, sun cold and all.

Anyhow, I quickly got into my role and soon I was a real good jointer. I moved on to installing the fibre network as a build engineer, so this entailed doing the bit before what I did as a new site install engineer. Soon I was asked to be a Ribbon Jointer, which at the time was a big thing as there were not many ribbon jointers about. Ribbon jointing was different so instead of jointing 1 fibre at a time it was 12.

I want to point out that whilst this is the route I had taken, I had great teachers with Duncan, Phil and Jamie.

When working on the spines, and from the images above, the fibres will be tested correctly after the fact individually, generally with someone putting light on each fibre upstairs and you look for the light in each fibre. Looking directly into any fibre with a laser directed to the eye is bad for your health. DO NOT DO THAT!

In the time that I was a jointer/ Engineer. I was sent to Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle-Upon-Lyme, amongst other places far and wide. I did 6 months with CST or service delivery, (The people who install the fibre into the home). For 1 particular customer, I remember, I walked in and they stated they already had fibre, I disagreed as there was no Splice point outside and to me a fairly obvious fact. However, When I turned the corner I saw the wall I was meant to install the ONT or Optical Network Termination point on, (The white box the fibre plugs into before the router), and I saw mould on the wall. As I turned around to tell them about said mould and I wouldn't be able to do the installation, I noticed it around the entire room's walls. Everywhere I looked. Mould on the wall. I turned to the customer, (Bearing in mind I had my mask on due to the Coronavirus outbreak strapped to my face) and I said you're right. You do have fibre already. I'll leave you be. And I got out as soon as I could and called my patch lead whose name was Ryan. He said no worries. Don't worry about it and am I OK?

Anyhow, after doing a spine or 2, CST work and a New site installer, and having been a jointer now for 16/18 months from the date I joined 12 of those being an apprentice, I heard of a role called FBC. This is called Fibre Based Coordinator. I immediately fell in love with the role and what it entailed. So I applied for a position as some positions came about, I believe it was 24 places across the UK and from what I was told around 2000 applications.

I was enthusiastic from the off. I had the interview over teams in the back of my van in my work clothes, but I was bouncing all over the place as I was answering, and giving my examples for the Interviewer. I think my enthusiasm is what got me the job. I interviewed in April/May. I found out late in August/September that I had the position but it wasn't until the 1st or 2nd of Jan that I started my job. It started rough. I didn't know who my manager was until the day I started and I was trying to track down my manager for the month leading up to starting. When I did start the position my boss was a man called Kevin. Who, was due to retire soon though he didn't know it yet. He had an apparition I think called where he dreamed he should retire. Then later that year retired.

Kevin was grand. He knew it would take a while to settle in and gave me all the time possible. Something I will take into my thoughts going forward, as I progress eventually to Project Manager.

From Kev, I learned the basics. The learning curve was something I could have never imagined. It was incredibly steep, so steep I felt like I was bending over backwards at times. I was taken through how to audit, how to commission, how to talk to contractors, the best ways to find a solution, prices of solutions, and policies to be aware of amongst many other things that I have slowly forgotten due to them being outdated practices now.

I then moved to the Wednesbury team with Darryl as my boss. Things got real then. I was expected to work on my own. Which I can do, but in this new role I was still unsure of myself and always doubting my ability. Eventually, because there were no walk-through guides at the time for the jobs we were doing I started creating my own and passing them to other members of my team to see if they were able to be followed without input from an experienced FBC. I got great feedback and started doing guides for other policies and practices as an FBC. things went from good to better, to great. Eventually, I started rolling out my 'How To' guides nationally and the feedback was awesome, I kept getting requests for access to the guides, and this eventually led to my guides getting put on the company's internal site-wide App, Linx.

As seen on the right, when searching for FBC, you find FBC how-to guides. and in that, we find some guides. Sadly with the amount of guides I did and the amount of updates to policies and procedures over the last 12 months or so, a lot of these how-to guides are slightly out of date. At the time I received so much great feedback and they wouldn't have gotten on the Company App site had it not been any good.

From this, I take great Pride.

Since this inception, Our time on commissioning alone has dropped about 85-95% it used to take about 10 mins from when I first joined as an FBC to commission. 589 and 590 was our tick checklist. To commission a network it took approx 10-15mins max. Slowly things kept getting added to the commissioning tasks and soon we had Tadds, light readings, toggle tests, HHT adjustments amongst other things. This meant that commissioning times went up to about 1 hour, which is fine if you only had 1. But you don't. You normally have 2 or 3 at least. Unless Networks get pulled in or pushed out of delivery whether that be for cost or civils failing, civils avoidance failing or something being missed, or light issues on testing. At which point you can have 6 in one week or none. If you have 6 remember you have to go out and walk said network to make sure it's built to policy, and make notes if it isn't. Now we use an App to record these notes but that doesn't matter at this point. delivery is on a Wednesday, so generally, it's cabled by the Wednesday before. We go out and walk by the Friday and then that gives the contractor a day or 2 to fix any issues before commission. As you see this can be hectic if you have more than 3 or 4. Or indeed have to cover for someone else.

If you have no PONs to walk then you would normally go out and survey for a build. this is the general inception of a PON and you are essentially designing the network and how it is to be built. Genreally there will be an idea of what needs to be done and you go out to check these issues. If they can be dealt with then we claim back how much it would have cost us to give it to contractors. if not, we then decide can civil's avoidance deal with it. sometimes they can and others not. generally, you can tell if it will need a dig or can be done with digging. but that is your call on the day.

In between these 2 main jobs, we get called out to issues with contractors. Calling it 'issues' is a bit strong maybe. They generally know the issue but need permission to be able to go ahead with the solution as we may have something in mind, but if we don't or what they say is better than our plan then are OK to let them go ahead with it.

About 6 months into my FBC career I had an interview for a Project manager interview and it went well. But I missed the all-important work safe, home safe motto that has become part of our company. I think because of this I didn't get the job. I probably wouldn't have got it anyway due to only being on 6 months in post, but it was a REALLY good interview.

Here I am about another 12-16 months later and I feel good. Im in a good place and I think I'd like to try again for project manager.

I will let you know in due course.

Thanks for reading.