Build skills and qualifications to prepare you for life while enjoying travel, sports, and challenges.

About Role

Construction is a big part of the Army’s work at home and abroad. Our first-class training teaches you how to work with plan tasks, drawings, workshop machinery use, scaffolding, and preparing timber for use. You will become a highly skilled carpenter and joiner. You will also learn to make joints, doorframes, windows, roofing, and flooring. If you ever decide to leave Army service, you’ll have a great CV with experience and qualifications. Carpenter and Joiner is a trade role in the Royal Engineers. All the Royal Engineer soldier job roles are divided into 5 groups. When you apply to the Engineers, you will apply to the trade group rather than the specific trade.

The Royal Corps of Engineers enables the Army to operate anywhere in the world, whether in combat zones or relief missions. The corps is often the first on the ground, building key infrastructure for the incoming troops, and the last to leave, closing down army camps and patrol bases. Their technical expertise are priceless in times of crisis, where they spearhead the quick repair of wrecked infrastructure and the restoration of critical services to devastated communities.

Know your responsibilities

• Plan carpentry and joinery tasks from sketches and working drawings.
• Learn the use and maintenance of workshop machinery.
• Prepare timber for use, manufacture joints, use adhesives, produce windows, door frames, door linings, and internal joinery fitments.
• Carry out general construction work, first fix timber frames, and second fix internal joinery fitments.
• Install partitions, floors, roofing, timber-framed buildings, formwork, and shoring.
• Construct scaffolding, interpret scaffold terms, erectan an access scaffold, and install access ladders.

Qualifications

• Age: From 16 years & 6 months to 35 years & 6 months
• Qualifications:

  GCSE Grade A–D/9-3, or Scottish National 4, in maths, English language, and one other subject.

• Basic physical fitness assessment:
  • Mid-Thigh Pull 50kg
  • Medicine Ball Throw 3m
  • MSFT (beep test) level 7.5

  More information about the fitness test

  

Your Training

First step

Your initial military training teaches you how to be a soldier, covering everything from field craft to how to handle a rifle.

• If you join as a junior soldier (under 17 years and 6 months), you’ll do a military training course at Harrogate.
• If you join as a regular soldier (over 17 years and 6 months), you’ll do the regular adult basic training.

Second step

You head to the Royal School of Military Engineering Regiment near Camberley, Surrey, for 12 weeks. Here, you learn military engineering skills, such as knots and lashings, demolition, mine warfare, and bridge building. The final stage of training is 21 weeks at the Royal School of Military Engineering in Chatham, Kent. Here, you learn how to use machinery and hand tools to make timber building materials.

Qualifications you could get after training

• Level 2 and 3 Diplomas in Carpentry and Joinery (Military Engineering).
• Level 2 Apprenticeship (NVQ Technical Certificate and Functional Skills) in Wood Occupations, Site Carpentry (City and Guilds).

You pay

During the training, the minimum amount you’ll earn is £26,334 yearly.

After completing basic trade training, you’ll earn £26,334 yearly.

Application