Hi,
I am a planning engineer for a small-medium size contractor in England. I started as a "Junior Planner" a year ago which I thought involved having guidance from a Planner or someone more senior than me. However when joined I was the only one in the department which was a bit of a surprise considering this was my first job out of uni.
I work in various departments within the company and only spend 50-60% of the time creating tender/construction/finishing programme’s at best with little to no assistance/guidance. I have never been on site to see any work actually being carried out or even should how to read schedules/drawings etc. I have pretty much thought myself how to use ASTA which I am pretty adept at by this stage. We mainly use the plans to ascertain the project duration at tender stage & report progress. I occasionally use baseline for as-builts however I can use this feature and many others. We do not create resource & cost loaded programmes however I have created resource histogram's when I find the time for tender interviews.
Thing is I enjoy planning & want to progress myself and leave the other roles I carryout behind me. I have never had any communication with other planner so I am clueless as to how to go about this, so I would appreciate some advice. I imagine I need to move to a larger blue chip firm which value planner and where I could learn from senior planners.
There are several variations to the planner including junior, intermediate, assistant planner, planning assistant & planner etc. Does anyone have any advice on which role I would best suit given my inexperience in direct planning & site experience, where I could get this? I enjoy my job and love the people I work with I just feel that should anything happen to the firm or if I need to move I wont have the experience to pass an interview!
Any guidance would be appreciated.