One of the biggest and most well respected names in the engine repair and overhaul services industry is seeing a period of frenetic activity. Hong Kong Aero Engine Services Ltd (HAESL) has embarked on a mammoth expansion project to cater to the introduction of a new aircraft engine type, and is now beefing up its manpower to anticipate the growth.

“It’s an exciting time in the industry because it’s a period of growth driven by more engines being sold by Rolls Royce, and here we are a company that looks after Rolls Royce engines, so our response to it is to grow the business,” says Angus Barclay, Director and General Manager of HAESL, which is a joint venture between Rolls Royce and HAECO.

The growth that Barclay refers to is due to the overwhelming reception of Rolls Royce’s new XWB engine, which is specifically intended for the Airbus A350. It is a particularly good engine while, at the same time, the aircraft itself is exceedingly popular, so the engines are selling very well.

“The XWB is proving to be the best-selling engine that Rolls Royce has ever produced so we are getting ready to look after those engines, and in fact as we speak the first two engines are already with us,” says Barclay.

Enlarging the company footprint

To cater to this, HAESL is building a whole new facility called Phase 6, which is set to open at the end of the year. The new facility will add another 15,000 square metres to its already huge overall footprint, as well as increasing its manpower.

Barclay notes that the company has already enlarged its workforce by about eight per cent year on year to respond to this growth.

“Bringing in a new Rolls Royce’s engine type is always extremely exciting for an engine overhaul business,” he says.

For these reasons and more, a position on the company’s graduate trainee scheme is highly coveted and competitive.

“The really exciting thing is that what we are doing here is right at the very top level of engineering in Hong Kong,” Barclay says. “We are dealing with jet engines which are amazing technology, and we work closely with Rolls Royce, as we are 50 per cent owned by them, so an engineer who comes to work for HAESL really does work with the best technology available in Hong

Kong and it’s at a global standard and a business with global connectivity.”

Opportunities for graduates

Each year, the company opens its doors to around three graduate trainees. Interested candidates can either apply to go through its Engineering Graduate Trainee (EGT) scheme or the General Graduate Trainee (GGT) scheme. Both schemes are part of a four-year programme that aims to equip graduate trainees with technical competencies as well as business acumen and management qualities.

Trainees with a background in either Mechanical or Aerospace engineering will undergo the HKIE Scheme A programme and then will go into a two-year period where they attach specifically to quality assurance, as well as safety and improvement departments for three- months respectively. General Graduate Trainees will be rotated through the various operational departments with a focus on the supporting departments, which are extremely important to the business. These include Supply Chain, Human Resources and Finance.

“We are a business with global contact points and we have customers from all over the world and we also have a supply chain that comes from all over the world, so our employees are in daily contact with people around the globe. HAESL’s vision is ‘Best in the world, Best for the world’, so our goal is to be at the absolute top of our industry in terms of the work we do and to make sure we are also doing the right thing for our environment and for our own community,” says Barclay.

Overseas placement

Perhaps the most attractive aspect of the programme is that both schemes will offer candidates an opportunity for a 10 to 12-week secondment to Cathay Pacific Airways, and another 10 to 12-week secondment to Rolls Royce in the UK in their third and fourth year.

“The most interesting part of the graduate trainee scheme is definitely the overseas placement in Rolls Royce,” says Karina Mak, who is now a Senior Engineer at HAESL, but came through the programme around 10 years ago. “You get to see the differences between the parties and get to learn best practices from them and widen your horizons. Being able to work overseas meant that you could do a bit of travelling on weekends, which is really attractive and definitely memorable.”

Aside from the practical experience, graduate trainees who undergo the programme are set to embark on a very exciting career path.

“We are looking for leaders of the future for the business, so as the start of a career it’s a fantastic programme,” says Barclay. “They can rise right up through the organisation; in fact, when we look at graduate trainees who came in the beginning of the scheme, they are heading some of our biggest departments, so the sky’s the limit basically.”

Mak is a case in point. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin in the USA and majored in Industrial Engineering. Fresh out of university, she was looking for a job in engineering in Hong Kong when she stumbled on HAESL.

“Hong Kong is such a small place and I could never imagine there was this big, neat factory with all of these huge engines lined up in orderly fashion, the tour alone was totally eye opening,” says Mak, who is now in charge of the engine test cell and is also part of the project team for the XWB development project, as well as Phase 6. “This is by far the biggest project in HAESL in terms of scale and investment, so I’m delighted and honoured to be a part of this.”

Network building

Mak cannot exalt the programme enough, saying that it not only greatly enhanced her technical knowledge, but that she also achieved intense fulfilment and a sense of achievement, not to mention that she built a strong network of colleagues and partners she could turn to if she had any questions.

“I know how to pool my resources to support my job and projects now and that helps a lot,” she says.

She has three key pieces of advice for those who are considering applying for the programme and successfully get on board. Firstly, she says graduate trainees should get as much hands-on experience as they can.

“Just by reading the manual, things don’t really stick to you. If you have frontline experience, you will get to know the frontline staff and the working environment better. That helps you a lot to manage them later on,” she says.

Secondly, she said that trainees must be humble, as it encourages other people to share valuable information with you. Lastly, she said that graduates need to be proactive to ask lots of questions and try to get to know people and build up their network.

“Get to know the key person in each department,” she said. “At the end of the day, it’s up to you how big of a sponge you want to be, and because there’s just so much information in the company that you can learn, whether it’s technical or soft skills.”

Finally, to those who are considering applying, Barclay stresses that this programme is really for people who wish to make something of the opportunity.

“We have wide open doors in that respect,” he says.