Go-Ahead London Technical Support Manager Darren Connolly was a winner in the first ever IRTE Skills Challenge. routeone finds out what it means to him
The engineering stars in the coach and bus sector are rarely in the public eye, yet the work they do is often the most innovative and dynamic across the entire transport sector.
The IRTE Skills Challenge, an annual competition which takes place in June, pits young engineers, technicians and mechanics against each other to celebrate the hard work and expertise of this vital part of the industry.
routeone was keen to find out how the IRTE Skills Challenge had helped support the career of one of its very first winners. Technical Support Manager at Go-Ahead London Darren Connolly came to mind, not least because he was involved in the very first Skills Challenge, but because his career has since flourished.
Darren’s current projects involve preventing major unit failures and overseeing Go-Ahead’s exhaust retrofit programme to upgrade Euro IV and V vehicles to Euro VI.
Pointing to the changes that have happened in the years since he first began his apprenticeship in 2004, he pushes the importance of being forward thinking and adaptable. “Our industry has changed very quickly,” he says. “I’m a diesel fitter, and my trade is slowly disappearing. If you’re not adaptable you might quickly get lost.”
Multidisciplined
Darren had already passed his three-year apprenticeship with Go-Ahead London by the time he put himself forward for the first Skills Challenge, which took place in 2011.
His endeavour paid off. Darren was awarded Runner Up in the Mechanical Technician Award, and won the Mechanical and Electrical Combined Award alongside the Electrical, Mechanical and Body Team Award.
While proud of his wins, being runner up is also a point of pride for Darren. “That is the great thing about the Skills Challenge,” he explains. “It’s a learning experience as much as it is a challenge of what you already know.”
The Challenge
In a full day of events, there was plenty to keep Darren and his teammates busy.
He describes the challenges set around engines, transmissions, brakes and tyres.
For the brakes challenge, competitors were required within a set time limit to diagnose components of an air braking system in order to find and rectify a fault.
Darren then won the Mechanical and Electrical Combined Award when rectifying the transmission fault challenge. “It shows that you can work together as a team with your colleagues to diagnose and rectify a fault that is part of the vehicle.”
A vehicle upon lifts required an inspection of overhead tappets on a static engine, while the tyres challenge required the contestants to describe the failure mode of a selection of tyres – such as tracking – and a demonstration to the assessor that each fault had been correctly identified.
The benefits
The Skills Challenge is an open invitation to any who feel confident enough to take part. For Darren, the invitation was filtered through his Chief Engineer and to the depot managers. As a member of the Society of Operations Engineers, Darren knew it would be good for his career – especially since he himself acknowledged that he had “not long been on the tools” when he applied.
“Being that I was a young engineer, with some of the best training in the industry, I wanted to see how good I was compared to other teams and operators across the country,” he says.
The networking opportunities were one of the biggest boons, Darren explains. “You can become siloed when you’re working in a garage. Being confined within the workplace can limit your view of the bigger picture.”
The Skills Challenge, then, also presented the opportunity for Darren and his peers to escape the workshop environment and meet other industry professionals and suppliers, as well as take the opportunity to put himself under pressure, adapt and work together as one team.
It could well be that the experience and confidence granted from the Skills Challenge was a direct factor in how his career has flourished since. In 2018, Darren won an Environmental Campaign Champion award for his work in the Go-Ahead exhaust retrofit programme.
At any rate, he is a credit to the IRTE Skills Challenge and the attitude that it promotes – to push yourself further than you might otherwise have done.
“It’s good to take yourself out of your comfort zone,” he says. “I call it the Masterchef of bus mechanics, or engineering. It challenges you, you learn from it, you meet new people – I was rubbing shoulders with our Group Engineering Director at the time, the late Phil Margrave, and the Chief Executive of Go-Ahead, David Brown, who was able to see the accomplishments that we had achieved.
“It helps your name to become recognised throughout your career.”
