Case Studies

Nicola Wormald
“I’ve always loved ‘getting my hands dirty. I used to help my uncle work on his Land Rover and so I decided that mechanical engineering was the career that I wanted. I picked up a leaflet on BTEC qualifications at Keighley College and started on a scholarship with them, which paid me £50 per week while I was training. Then I managed to get a job as an apprentice with Carnauld Metal Box (CMB) at Shipley and continued my apprenticeship training with KADTAL.”

CMB have a niche business - manufacturing and supplying can manufacturing machinery for both the parent company and for export to other businesses world-wide.

Nicola won several awards while she was in training - she won the Tony Byford award from Keighley College, for the most improved student in her first year with them, and also won KADTAL’s Woman Engineer of the Year twice.

She successfully completed her apprenticeship, picking up an HNC along the way, in 2004, despite suffering from dyslexia. Nicola has no problems with the numerical work but her colleagues help her by proof-reading the reports that she had to do for work or college.

Nicola wanted to continue with her studies and looked on the internet, with the help of KADTAL, to see what she could do next. She found the BEng in Mechanical Engineering that Leeds Metropolitan University offered on a part-time basis. She goes for one day a week and has her fees paid by CMB who have a strong history of support for their apprentices.

Some of the course has been a challenge - especially control and instrumentation that was a new subject for Nicola, but she was offered additional support by the university and has been holding her own alongside others who have been following the academic route.

Nicola is looking forward to completing the degree course in a couple of years time and wants to become a production engineer, with a longer time plan to become a production manager.