Vacation Employment Scheme Case Study

Duncan Smith: 20 yrs old
University Of Gloucestershire (Cheltenham)
Degree in Business Management
Benefits gained: financial (obviously); going outside ‘comfort zone’; seeing what its like at the bottom end of the food chain; taking instructions from others; communicating with people of different abilities; discovering the concept of working long hours/being awake during the day!

I have spent the last summer holidays driving dumper trucks and rollers. I started out by training to drive both vehicles, this was 9 days in total, the training was interesting, fun, and helped give an insight into what the job was going to involve. The first day and a half of training was spent learning about the health and safety issues involved when driving large plant and working on a construction site as well as how the engines work and the checks which should be made. After a day and a half learning the theory the rest of the training was spent learning how to drive the vehicles, for the dumper truck training we went to a local working quarry which helped see what a real construction site would be like. After a few days learning how to drive a vehicle there was a practical test which wasn’t too difficult for either vehicle.

After getting a ticket for dumper trucks and rollers I started work near Nottingham helping to build a bypass. The other workers at the site were a lot more friendly and helpful than I’d expected which helped make the work a lot easier.

When driving the dumper trucks the work involved a lot of off-road driving through rough conditions which was great fun, as I was in one of the new vehicles it had a CD player, air conditioning and a good seat which made driving very comfortable. The rollers were slow to drive but satisfying as the work was sometimes quite tricky.

I also did three nights working 7 through until 7 helping build up banks for a railway bridge by a bypass which was being built, the pay was more and involved the same sort of work as in the day; the site was floodlit so it was easy to see.

I really enjoyed the few months I spent training and working and am looking forward to doing it again next year. I couldn’t think of many better summer jobs as the working environment was a lot different to life at university, the job was fun and the money was good.