Our company does:

• Engineering Workshop Services (Fabrication (Light & Heavy), Valve & Rotating Equipment Maintenance & Overhauls, Machining services (Workshop & On site)
• Fabrication, testing and installation of Piping, Equipment and structural steelwork.
• Installation of Plant and Machinery
• Term Maintenance, Project execution, Scheduled and unscheduled shutdowns
• Heat Exchanger Team to plan and execute pulling, rebuilding, testing and de-spading of all size heat Exchangers / tube bundles, fin fan Coolers etc
• Shutdown planning teams to carry out full upfront planning and method statements / risk assessments of all mechanical shutdown works right through to execution
• Design & Provision of Access (Scaffolding / MEWPs / Rope Access).
• Painting & Thermal Insulation design and application.
• Civil work execution
All above are conducted for the chemical, petro-chemical, oil & gas, process, food, steelmaking pharmaceutical, power, nuclear, marine and industrial markets.

More information about the business:

Hertel are a Dutch company which was founded in 1875 and the Hertel Total Asset Management Limited business is part of Hertel UK Limited (HQ is Sotherby Road, Middlesbrough). Hertel Total Asset Management Ltd. Employees approximately 220 employees in Teesside, Humberside and Grangemouth (Scotland).
Hertel UK Limited was established in 1975 to provide services to the UK Petro-Chem, pharmaceutical, power, nuclear, marine and industrial market
• Annual turnover – Circa £150million £145m
• Regional offices - 18 16
• Full time personnel – Circa 3,500

The main skills you need for this industry are:

• Management skills (Cost Engineering, Human Resources, Business Management, Project Management etc.)
• IT skills, software, systems and hardware
• Mechanical Fitting Skills (including use of boring, lathe, milling, surface grinding machines)
• Instrumentation skills – for fault finding and overhaul of control valves.
• Electrical skills (Including High Voltage) – for maintenance (fault finding) and new build projects.
• Metallic pipe and structural steelwork fabrication skills including:- pipe fitting, plating, welding, sheet metalworking.
• Rigging and steel erecting skills.
• Craft Assistant skills (Semi skilled, drivers etc.)
• Scaffolding skills
• Painting skills
• Thermal insulation skills.

A typical day at work is:

Within the mechanical workshops side of the business this would involve receiving components from various plants (such as valves, pumps, vessels) into the workshops where they would be checked for de-contamination and a work list developed to facilitate the overhaul and re-furbishment (such as replacement of components – seals, gaskets, diaphragms and machining and fitting of new components where necessary).
Within the Project Execution sector this could involve the fabrication of pipe spools and structural steelwork for installation on site to build a new facility or pipe line.
Within the Light Fabrication Section this could involve measuring up pump guards on site for a customer, issuing a fixed price and manufacturing and fitting the new guards.
All of the above activities are supported by the IT, HR, Procurement, Accounts, Commercial and Legal, Quality, Health, Safety, Environment departments who administer the business.

The advice I would give a young person wanting a career in this line of work is:

It is important to put in maximum effort to achieve the best grades you can, and it would also be useful to try and learn as much as you can about engineering as it has so much to offer, from design engineering through to craft apprentices an a lot of disciplines. Through NETA / TTE / ECITB there is a lot of information (both via the websites and through personal visits to training centres and companies) available so young people can gain a better understanding of what the industry has to offer.
The industry can be very rewarding and offers opportunities to travel around the world.

Things we look for in a employee are:

In no particular order:-
• Reliability, Honesty, politeness
• Well presented with a good work ethic.
• Flexibility to learn new skills and work in different areas.
• Good positive attitude, with the ability to work in teams and on their own.
• Good representative for the company when dealing with customers.

Our business is involved with schools and the new specialised diplomas by:

Not too sure as I would like to know more about them. It is something that the company would always support, as there are too few young people coming into our industry and we need to get the message out that it is a very rewarding industry which can help them release their aspirations and ambitions.
We have been conducting year nine student visits to our workshops on Teesside over the last few months to help them understand the industry better.

Our hopes for the future of the business are:

We hope to grow and expand the business, offering all of our services in an integrated fashion, thus bringing added value to our customers. Key to us growing the business is the recruitment of new personnel to expand the business locally and UK wide.