Student Spotlight - Fraser Ellis
In his last year of study, Fraser Ellis has taken up the challenge of competing on the world stage.
Fourth-year apprentice Fraser Ellis hadn’t heard of WorldSkills until he was invited to regionals last year.
Now he’s about to take on the world – in the Construction Steelwork competition at WorldSkills Australia in Brisbane this month.
“The GOTAFE metal fabrication crew invited to the regional competitions, which I did quite well at,” Fraser said.
“The regionals was the first time I had ever heard of it (WorldSkills) and that was in July or August last year, and then slowly since then it’s been a steady build up to more training, more practice and all that – it’s been good.”
Currently completing his Certificate III in Engineering – Fabrication Trade (MEM31922), Fraser is looking forward to testing what he has learnt in a competition setting.
“We had our training camp for Team Victoria…and that was phenomenal, to actually get into the sort of head space, especially with everybody else there and meeting the rest of Team Victoria, it was really good,” he said.
“(It will be) 16 hours of competition over three days, so I imagine there’s going to be five or six hours each day of trying to put together and decipher these drawings. I know that while in the actual workplace they try to be very (clear), everything is easy to understand, I know these drawings for WorldSkills are built (to be complex).
“A day of doing construction steelwork is going to be bouncing between all of the different machines, it’s going to be fighting for a spot to make sure you catch one that’s free and it’s going to be hectic.”
An employee at Furphy Engineering in Shepparton, Fraser is already happy to recommend WorldSkills competitions to other apprentices – even before he steps on the plane to Brisbane.
“It feels like a proper test of what I’ve been learning as I’ve been getting all of these skills - and of the tests that I could have had for it it’s definitely a big one,” he said.
“WorldSkills is amazing, especially to take what we do for a job and for a living – or for the curiosity and the fun of it – to take that to a competition level? That can almost never be done. You can maybe think about it at work (in terms of) delivering it to the customer by the deadline, but this is actually competing, there’s judges, there’s scores…there’s no other time to do it.
“I’d definitely like to thank GOTAFE for giving me the access to some of the resources, because lots of different places in construction steelwork have their focuses and niches and stuff that they work on and so construction steel, the part that I’m going into, is a little bit different to what I do every day.
“(GOTAFE) has been awesome in helping me get those skills that a lot of other people would already have at their workplaces. They try to make it as even a playing field as possible.”