Day In The Life Of A Workshop Engineer – Freddie Dyer

Freddie Dyer
Workshop Engineer

Since I was in 4th year in secondary school I knew I wanted to do Engineering in some capacity and computers started to interest me more and more as I grew older. So after completing secondary school, I did a PLC plc course in Dublin where I got distinctions in preliminary engineering. I was thankfully then in a position to progress to university. I had offers to stay in Dublin or study in the University of Limerick. At the time I saw UL as a better center of engineering, it’s one of the top tier Universities, with an incredible campus and the societies also helped me to make my decision to study Electronic & Computer Engineering. The sense of community is great especially in comparison to coming from Dublin!

Upon graduating college, I went on the job hunt and found OBW through LinkedIn and after a little research, I didn’t hesitate to apply. Once I’d been shown around the new office and met some of the team, there was only ever going to be one answer when JJ offered me a job following my interview.  

On my work placement in college. I’d worked for a large organistion which obviously has its perks but I was one of a thousand there and I much rather being in a smaller company where everyone knows each other. 

Typical Day

Logistics – Diagnostics – Calibration – Sales – Customer Service.

I’m lucky that there’s a bit of variety to my days, however there are of course certain tasks that need to be completed each day. Every morning I need to issue calibration certs for units we’ve calibrated or repaired along with the correct gas bottle type that is used to calibrate the unit and send these to the customers. In terms of the calibrations these are done using a dock or I can manually calibrate them. 

“I’m learning so much everyday“

In recent months, I’ve been given the opportunity to attend sites to conduct calibrations of some fixed gas detection units, which gets me out of the office and expands my knowledge base. I’m not 100% up to speed but I’m learning so much everyday and I’m branching out into some technical writing at present which I really enjoy. I’m currently writing a Manual for fixed gas detection units, so new members of the team know what to do easily and quickly upon starting.

As a team, we service/calibrate hundreds of units each week with the repairs side of the job being my personal favourite. I love finding out what’s wrong and troubleshooting whether that’s over the phone, on site or back at HQ. For example, last week I got a call from a customer that his unit was alarming uncontrollably but in his description I noticed that he hadn’t charged the unit. I advised him to simply charge the unit and the issue was solved. They’re not all that simple but there’s a great sense of satisfaction when you can fix something.  I’m working towards having a larger knowledge base so I can do this more effectively in the future. 

Goals

Looking forward, I’d love to be in a managerial role, once I’ve skilled myself up of course. At the moment we’re expanding rapidly and I’m really looking forward to being part of that. The sense of community is very much here, it’s a small business relatively speaking so you get to see the same people everyday which is really nice, there’s a real family feel at OBW!

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