WorldSkills gold for Marshall Aerospace apprentice is a source of pride

Marshall apprentice Jeremy Franks, who struck gold in the Aeronautical Engineering Mechanical category at WorldSkills 2021, described participating in the competition as “a good experience”.

The WorldSkills movement started in the 1950s, to celebrate and build confidence among young people through skills support. Today it is active in more than 80 countries. In the UK the categories for the annual showcase include ‘engineering and technology’, ‘health and hospitality’, and ‘digital, business & creative’.

After the initial application, Jeremy was asked to do a basic test to ensure he was suitable to compete. This was followed by the qualifier round, which involved building a magazine stand out of sheet metal and rivets to specifications set by the team at WorldSkills and judged by an experienced technician at Marshall Aerospace.

“It’s normally held in one place but this year you’re assigned someone from your work such as a team leader or a fully qualified engineer,” explains Jeremy. “The marking scheme meant they watched me build the magazine rack, took loads of pictures, and sent them off to the organisers.

“It took six hours. The design was provided so it was just to do the manufacture, but they left out a couple of bits, like the dimensions, so there were choices to be made.”

Eight finalists were selected from the 22 in the qualifying round.

“The final was held on board HMS Sultan in Gosport,” Jeremy says. “Normally with WorldSkills the final is at the NEC in Birmingham for a week, with all the other categories like hairdressing, cooking and beauty, but this year each final was held separately.

“The eight of us were from various companies, five were from the Airbus wing factory in Wales, one from Raytheon UK and another from Serco in Cornwall, she worked on a Royal Navy contract on Merlin helicopters.”

Three of the finalists were female.

“We all got on really well,” adds Jeremy, who is French-American and was born in Aberdeen. “We ate together in the evenings, it was all good.”

The final involved completing several timed tasks in a round-robin style set-up. The tasks included an insert repair, a primary flight control unit removal with restricted access, a daily inspection of a helicopter, control rigging on a Gazelle helicopter, a hydraulic design and set-up, and a borescope inspection.

“I completed everything pretty confidently,” notes Jeremy. “There was only one task I ran out of time on, but a lot of the tasks were designed so you can’t finish it in the time allotted, just to see how far you got.”

Jeremy has been in Cambridge since January this year. He’s in the third year of his apprenticeship. He began his career as an apprentice at Virgin Atlantic and moved over to Marshall Aerospace when he was made redundant due to Covid in 2020.

“I started the Virgin Atlantic apprenticeship programme two and a half years ago based out of Gatwick,” he says. “Then Covid struck hard and one of the cuts was the apprenticeship programme, but the bosses there all had connections and managed to rehome us.

“There’s eight of us in the Marshall apprentice programme. I was inputted straight into the business as my time at Virgin Atlantic was taken forward. We do heavy maintenance on C130s – everything that can be done. When the aircraft comes in we strip it down to the bare minimum and rebuild it from there.

“It’s an eight-month visit for a C130 to Marshall’s, taking it down to its structure, examining it for defects, taking X-rays all over the aircraft to look for corrosion which can’t be seen by eye, spotting anything which hasn’t been picked up.”

And Marshall makes some of the parts for the C130 repairs?

“Marshall is an approved manufacturer but parts come from all over the world. Marshall does a lot of building its own parts anyway – there’s a design office here as well. They design a new bit and then build it across the road and send it backto us.”

Jeremy’s apprenticeship will continue for at least another year.

“I’m in the third year of a four or five-year programme so it depends on how things go,” he says, “but it’ll probably be another two years before I’m fully qualified. At that point I’ll be graded as a fitter and go through the grades by getting experience signed off to become a tradesperson and then a team manager after that.

“I don’t know exactly what I’ll do after the two years is up. You’re told you’re guaranteed employment but you can never be too sure. I’m quite open-minded. Right now I’m happy: for me WorldSkills has been a good experience, I went down there, I loved it and met some cool people and came back – and I was really surprised I won it!”

Jeremy isn’t the first Marshall apprentice to have excelled at WorldSkills – Hayden Jakes also won a gold in 2019 and was garnered with an MBE for his effort.

A Marshall spokesperson said: “Following on from Hayden Jakes’s 2019 MBE gold medal win at the WorldSkills International in Kazan, Russia, Jeremy has once again demonstrated the extraordinary competency and talent that Marshall apprentices are known for.”