Neil Biddlecombe: He's Gone Far in His Career Choice
It’s a good thing Neil Biddlecombe enjoys travelling—the 52-year-old boilermaker often spends up to 95 per cent of his work week away from home, promoting and developing new projects, then overseeing the work once the project gets underway.
Although the travel part of the job appealed to Neil “right from the beginning,” he says that wasn’t what attracted him to the profession in the first place. “Actually, I didn’t even set out to be a boilermaker,” he says today. “I just knew that I wanted to work with my hands. I’d always taken enormous enjoyment and a lot of pride in being able to shape raw materials into a finished product. It was only natural that I’d be drawn to a career where I could do that.”
Looking back, it seems just as natural that Neil would eventually be drawn to a supervisory role in the industry. As a 12-year-old, he was already delivering daily newspapers. From 16 until 18, he had his own paper route and managed more than 20 paper carriers. While attending high school, he worked part-time as an auto mechanic.
This ability to work with his hands, and his demonstrated leadership skills, served Neil well immediately after he graduated from high school. He went to work in a steel fabrication plant, rising rapidly through the ranks during his five years there. In fact, says Neil, he might still be there except for a dramatic slowdown in the steel industry five years after he started. Instead, he listened to the advice of family friends and embarked on a career as a boilermaker pre-apprentice in 1976.
Again, Neil’s skills were evident, as were his five years’ experience at the steel fabrication plant—he completed his apprenticeship in just two and one-half years (the norm is four). Since then, he’s worked predominantly for two large companies, most recently Kamtech Construction. In his job as a Boiler Services Manager, Neil says he looks after a project “from womb to tomb.”
“Say a company wants to change the generating section on their recovery boiler. I’ll determine how much time the boiler will have to be shut down, how long the work will take and how many boilermakers we’ll need for the job. To do that, I have to visit the site at least two or three times before work actually begins.” Neil’s involvement doesn’t end there—he continues to travel to and from the site while the actual work is in progress.
“I’m doing all the things I enjoy doing. Plus the work I’m doing is financially rewarding. That’s a tough combination to beat.”