Phil Walker

Background

About Phil Walker

I've worked on the Steel Works since I left school in 1986. I started with two years YTS as the beginning of my four year apprenticeship. Whilst completing my apprenticeship, I also attended college for five years. Having successfully passed my ONC and HNC in electrical engineering, I continued to work for British Steel, then Corus and Tata Steel, now back at British Steel again. I first worked in a motor repair department for two years before transferring to the High Voltage section. I worked there for 15 years, maintaining a variety of different HV switchgear and associated protection relays, carrying out ground scans, earthing protection continuity testing and various repairs to steam turbine generators before moving up to a control position. I currently control and sanction all HV switching on one of the biggest private high voltage distribution systems in the country. We also authorise all HV safety documents for maintenance, repairs, breakdowns and commissioning new sections of the network. As well as sanctioning all work on the system we also carry out HV switching, earthing and raising documents on our plant to enable work out of hours, when the engineering staff are away. We also ratify newly raised Safe Working Procedures to ensure they remain within the remit of BES32, the nationally recognised standard for all safe HV working.