Apprentice Ashley King describes his qualifications journey

Ashley King is a Building Control Apprentice at London Borough of Havering and loves what he's learning with LABC qualifications while he's carrying out his day job...

What made you decide to work in public service building control?

I have always had an eye for the construction industry although my background says otherwise. It interests me about how different building works are carried out and in which stages. I read up some job descriptions on different roles within building control and everything was very positive. Having that flexibility of working in the office, going out on site and working from home really suited my personality.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

I enjoy having the flexibility of coming into the office of a morning and then heading out in the early afternoon to carry out site visits. I think this is a great mixture and keeps you very healthy. As well as this, there are huge amounts of information to learn and every day is a learning curve, so for me to think that if I might be working in building control for another 10-15 years and still learning on the job is amazing.

What’s a typical day like in building control?

A typical day for me involves coming into the office early to make sure all my emails have been sent, that I've responded to other emails and reports have been run. I plan for the day while doing this and then head out around lunchtime for the site visits. Once these have been completed, it's either back to the office or most likely heading home to finish writing up my reports on what happened that day.

What qualification are you studying and why?

I am currently studying the Level 3 Technical Support in Public Service Building standards which is coming to an end in late July 2020, and I'm trying to secure a place on the Level 6 BSc (Hons) in Building Control (Apprenticeship Degree) - University of Wolverhampton (4 years), as I want to keep educating myself while I have the time to. I chose this course as an opener into building control. I've only been in my building control role for the best part of six months and for me to really excel and progress within this industry, I want to keep pushing myself to the maximum of my studying abilities.