I want a new career or a slightly different job - I need ideas

[MascaraOHara]

Cos I'm fed up with my job. I need some inspiration!

I orginally started out in an accountants then went into IT, I have software development, project analysis and project management experience. What could I do? I need to earn a minimum of £30k. General ideas would be fabulous. TIA

[Toothache]

MOH - Have you thought about Planning??? I'm a Planning Engineer.... normally a role associated with Construction but I am about to start work within the IT department of a bank.

It pays anything from £160 per day (Junior Plan ner like me) upwards. An average rate would be £250 per day.

[MascaraOHara]

never thought about that, I could do planning for a different industry. Had you much experience?

[Blackduck]

What does being a planner involve??

MH - what about trainer - big call for Prince2 trainers and money is usually good...

[SoftFroggie]

Toothache: so what is a planning engineer? what do you do? how does it differ between different industries?

TIA

[MascaraOHara]

Don't use Prince2 - the bastards want to keep us here!!!

Would love to train but only the other week I was starting a thread about how crap I am talking in fron tof people

[Blackduck]

MOH - I love it and weirdly I'm not the most confident person either...! Could you get Prince certified?

[MascaraOHara]

I'd have to pay for it myself. Do you know any details about the course?

[Blackduck]

Various training companies deliver it...check this website here

[Toothache]

Hi folks. As a planning engineer I am involved with creating a programme of design and construction work when we are bidding jobs from clients. As well as a programme of work I produce a histogram showing how many men we propose will be on site each week. I use a specialised planning softwarer called Primavera (self taught whilst bored working in Admin with a Planning Team). If our company wins the job I produce a more detailed programme outlining every aspect of the scope of work (each trench we have to dig... then each cable that is going in the trench.... etc etc). It really doesn't matter what the activities are, whether its cabling or tank cleaning or painting a house! As long as you know the order the work has to happen and dates they need to have happened by. You just tie the work in with delivery of equipment and the everything else is just logically linked.... for example... you can't put a cable into a trench unless you've dug the trench! I really don't have much industry experience at all and never go down to the site!! I just stay in my portacabin and get the info from the foreman. Every week I plug percentages complete into the software against each activity we work on and use the figures to calculate our actual percent complete, then compare it to the planned percent complete.
If you can get your hands on Primavera and get a basic knowledge of it then your laughing.
Simple.

[katierocket]

new media project manager? i.e. managing the production of websites etc. Great job if you work in a good agency.

[MascaraOHara]

thanks for the suggestions and info. Rushed off feet this week so have been relatively absent. I feel like I'm stuck, £30k is the absolutely minimum I can earn but to do something else it looks like I'll have to go lower than that and I can't really.

Planning is a possibility, I have some experience in that area. I never really thought about planning in a different environment.

[Blackduck]

Have you looked at Project Management jobs? The websites I subscribe to are constantly banging on about needing IT Project Managers...

[MascaraOHara]

That's what I do at the moment.

What websites are you looking at? being a single mum restricts my ability to travel which is the problem really (otherwise I'd work in london)

[Blackduck]

www.jobserve.co.uk
www.totaljobs.com
www.cwjobs.co.uk
www.jobsite.co.uk