Plumber | Explore Careers - National Careers Service

Meet Matt

Matt works as a plumbing, heating and ventilation engineer for North Manchester General Hospital.

1 minute 45 second watch

View transcript

So I'm Matty Nicholls. I'm 21. I work at North Manchester General Hospital, and I'm a plumbing and heating and ventilation engineer.

So I did 2 years at college originally, fresh out of high school. Obviously got my qualifications. I studied a level 2, level 3 plumbing studies diploma.

It always keeps you busy, always keeps you on your toes. But that's the best bit about the job. You never know what you're going to get or how you're going to get it.

Very good for your mental health. Knowing you’ve, you can come in and make a difference, affect patient care and, you know, look after staff and at the end of the day work within a good team. That’s all that matters.

With our theatres, obviously they require hot water for sanitisation issues. In the summer, they require ventilation, air conditioning. And then in the winter, obviously they require heating. So as I say we look after all the ventilation plants. What produces the heating, the hot water. We look after all the checks to ensure the water quality is great. The steam quality is good. And then at the end of the day making sure everything that we're doing is good for the environment and and we’re being as efficient as possible.

So we've done our mandatory training with like lifting, health and safety. Got my compliance basis, a lot on asbestos. I've got training for the boiler courses, so I'm comfortable with the boilers. Ventilation, medical gas. The line is endless. Obviously they want to upskill their engineers and obviously, at the end of the day, make sure everyone's safe and competent at how to use machinery.

I always want to constantly upskill myself and gain as much knowledge as possible.

Communication is really important. I’d say teamwork, because you're always working within a team. A lot of tasks, you know, take 2 or 3 people. Being hard working, resilient, coming up on time. All them things are very, very important.

Whether you start out as a plumber and want to go and venture into different things, but there's that many aspects in plumbing, you know, you can start out as doing mainly plumbing and then taking on mechanical, boilers, ventilation, all sorts of different tasks.