Kelly is 30 years old and lives in Glynneath. She struggled at school and then found it difficult to settle into a regular job. She worked for six years in an insurance business but found that working in an office environment selling car insurance didn’t really suit her.
A friend mentioned that he really enjoyed working in construction which provided him with job satisfaction and a good wage, so Kelly found a training course and took her qualification to be a dumper driver.
She has worked for some large construction companies on a self-employment basis for over two years and is constantly in work, regularly being asked to go back to businesses due to her hard-working nature. She has worked on some major projects such as The Heads of the Valleys Road, a Railway project for Griffiths, Hanson’s Quarries, Tarmac and Prichard’s on a Persimmon Homes site.
Kelly is keen to progress and had established that to be able to apply for larger jobs she would need to pass the Excavator 360° course. As this was a 10-day course Kelly was very anxious about undertaking it as it would mean, being self-employed, that she would have to take time off work – without pay. Her strategy was to work additional hours and save enough money so that she could take the time off and still be able to pay her weekly bills.
She was very nervous about going on the course as she has dyslexia and knew that as well as the practical elements of the course there would be written tests too, but Kelly was determined to pass the tests. She devised her own strategy of revising outside the training centre and asked her partner to continuously ask her questions around the theory of the course at every opportunity.
Kelly also returned in July 2023 to complete her lifting operations course.
