We spoke to Lucy Fulton from M-Sport about working as an Electrical Harness Technician. Lucy explains how she got her role and what the job entails.
What is your role?
I work as an Electrical Harness Technician building and repairing rally 1 and rally 2 wiring harnesses and sensors. This includes using a high specification of wire, especially when building the rally 1 looms with the wire gauge being extremely fine and delicate. Understanding technical engineering drawings is another part of my role and abiding to our quality control standards.
What are your responsibilities and main jobs?
My main jobs are building wiring harnesses and sensors, ensuring that they meet the given deadline as well as rebuilding and repairing starter motors after every event.
What qualification do you need?
To work as an electrical harness technician, I completed my Level 3 NVQ in Engineering Manufacture and Maintenance through an apprenticeship with M-Sport.
What should you study in school?
Subjects to look at studying at school to become an electrical technician are Design Technology, Electronics, Physics and Maths. I carried on my education here at M-Sport completing my Level 2 & Level 3 NVQ in Engineering Manufacture and Maintenance through an apprenticeship.
What other skills are useful?
When working as an electrical technician skills like soldering are very useful to have as some looms involve this. It is useful to have an understanding of 3rd angle projection drawings, as well as crimping & splicing and using heat shrink materials.
How can I get work experience?
The best place to look at getting work experience as an electrical harness technician is to contact motorsport teams, offering to work voluntarily at a motorsport team will give you a great insight to what the job entails. It was M-Sport who gave me the opportunity to carry out my work experience in the electrical department during my time at school.
Do you get go to races?
In my role I spend my time working at the factory, however there is the opportunity to go to tests and race events.
What does a day at work look like for you?
In this role my days can vary. I spend the majority of my time building harnesses and sensors for our rally cars within the workshop in preparation for the next event.
Due to the cars having so many different looms I could be building a sensor one minute and then a wing loom the next, followed by a tailgate loom.
When the cars return from an event I normally rebuild and repair every rally 1 starter motor from that event in preparation for the next one. This is a very thorough process as the starter motor is to be completely stripped down, cleaned and then inspected for any damage or debris from the event, I then proceed to rebuild the starter motor using some new parts if needed.
Finally, I carry out quality control checks and tests on the starter motor to ensure it is working correctly and meets the quality control standards.