At a sparkling awards ceremony on November 17th, Lucas made the whole Canford team incredibly proud by winning Apprentice of the Year.
We nominated Lucas for this year’s Sunderland Echo Business Excellence Awards, in the category of Apprentice of the Year, after an exceptional first year at Canford. Working in the Production team under the supervision of Production Manager Shawn Pretorius, Lucas has gone from strength to strength, leaving all colleagues incredibly impressed by his attitude, enthusiasm, and ability.
We are delighted that Lucas has been formally recognised and has received this prestigious award and would like to congratulate the runners-up in this tightly contested category. If the awards proved anything this year it is that the future of business in the North East is in very safe hands.
Shawn Pretorius : Production Manager
Since Lucas started working for me just over a year ago, I have been surprised by him almost every day. He’s a very intelligent, fast learning individual and is always keen to learn.
Lucas started working in our NEAL police recorders department about 7 months ago. Just to learn to manufacture these takes months but Lucas has already mastered building these and has also learned how to setup and test the units. This is the fastest I’ve ever seen anything like this happen.
Lucas has a very positive attitude towards work and does whatever he’s asked to do. Most importantly he will never do anything he’s unsure of without asking first.
Lucas is progressing faster than any other apprentice I’ve ever seen and I’m proud to call myself his manager.
Gary Beavers : Test Engineer
Lucas started working in the NEAL test department and has been trained up on the full 9000 series, which includes two drive and three drive portable and “stand alone” recorders.
Testing these recorders involves adjusting the BIOS settings, which can be quite complex, but Lucas picked this up straight away, finding his way around the menu with ease. Other parts to the test include setting voltages with a DVM and checking decibel levels with an RTS. He’s managed to learn and to use both bits of test equipment and rarely needs me now for direction. Setting up the recorders also involves programming ICs and entering various versions of software, including giving each recorder its own identity. Again, Lucas has learnt and managed this without problem.
Quite often the recorders have faults during testing and recently he’s managed to rectify some problems successfully without my help.
Lucas shows good initiative; knowing what to do next when these recorders are being manufactured in here. I’m just about to suggest doing something and when I turn around, he’s already onto it. Administration wise, he was quick to pick up the system of labelling and adjusting the job status on the Canford Production App.
As well as testing the recorders, Lucas has been building them, learning new skills like crimping and soldering. His crimping and soldering are good too. From coming in on a morning to going home on an evening, he never shirks and is always working.
If Lucas remains in here for a while longer, I intend on training him up on the service side of things (which are customer returns). I also intend training him up on calibration, as we calibrate a lot of our test equipment inhouse.
Lucas is always pleasant, polite, and keen to learn new stuff.
Left to Right: Gary Beavers (Test Engineer) - Shawn Pretorius (Production Manager) - Lucas Foulk (Apprentice of the Year Winner!) - Alan Wilson (CEO) - Adam Ironside (Marketing Manager)
