Apprentice Service Planning Coordinator

Assist with planning forthcoming service schedules to help ensure engineers' time and travel are organised efficiently. Help coordinate field engineers' weekly and daily schedules. Learn how to balance planned preventative maintenance and routine servicing with reactive breakdowns, urgent jobs and changing customer priorities. Monitor engineer schedules throughout the working day and assist with changes caused by cancellations, job overruns, emergency call-outs, engineer availability and customer requirements.

Develop the ability to plan engineers geographically, helping to minimise unnecessary travel and maximise productive working time. Learn how work is allocated according to engineer availability, location, skills, experience and individual job requirements. Communicate with field engineers regarding schedules, appointments, job information and changes. Liaise with customers by telephone and email regarding service, maintenance and breakdown visits. Contact customers to confirm planned service appointments.

Assist with rearranging appointments when schedules or customer requirements change. Keep customers informed of changes or delays and develop the skills required to manage customer expectations professionally. Help monitor upcoming service and maintenance requirements to ensure scheduled work is planned within the appropriate timescales. Assist in checking that jobs are ready for engineer attendance, including relevant customer information, site requirements and parts or materials where applicable.

Work with the Stores team to help ensure engineers have the necessary parts and materials for scheduled work. Work with colleagues across Service, Stores and Sales to help coordinate customer requirements and engineer workloads. Create, update and maintain customer, service job and engineer scheduling information within company systems. Assist with monitoring outstanding jobs and arranging follow-up visits where additional work is required.

Learn how service performance is monitored, including outstanding work, overdue services, response requirements and engineer utilisation. Identify problems or issues and escalate them to the Service Coordination Manager or an appropriate member of the team. Carry out accurate data entry, record keeping and general Service Department administration. Undertake other reasonable administrative duties to support the Service Department and your development throughout the apprenticeship.

You will learn how to plan, coordinate and manage the daily and weekly workloads of field service engineers. The role combines customer service, administration, problem-solving and planning. You will be supported in developing the skills required to balance planned servicing with reactive breakdowns and changing customer requirements.

Our aim is to develop the successful apprentice into a confident and capable Service Planning Coordinator. Throughout your apprenticeship, you will gradually progress from supporting the planning team with administration and customer communication to taking greater responsibility for engineer schedules, customer requirements and day-to-day service coordination.

For the right person, this apprenticeship provides an opportunity to develop valuable skills and establish a long-term career within Direct Air & Pipework Ltd.

Direct Air is a full service compressed air company providing the supply, installation and ongoing maintenance of compressed air equipment. We see ourselves as an extension of our customers engineering team. We work nationwide and have 3 premises in both Coventry and Cheltenham.

Previous experience in an office, customer service, administration or engineering environment would be useful but is not essential. No previous compressed air industry or engineer scheduling experience is required, as training will be provided. The successful candidate should demonstrate: Good organisational skills and attention to detail. Good written and verbal communication skills. A polite, professional and confident telephone manner. An interest in planning, organisation and problem-solving.

The ability to work calmly when priorities change. A willingness to learn and take on new responsibilities. Confidence using computers and a willingness to learn new systems. Basic knowledge of Microsoft Office, including Outlook, Word and Excel. The ability to follow instructions while also developing the confidence to use your own initiative. Good timekeeping and reliability. A positive approach to working as part of a team. An interest in developing a long-term career within service coordination and planning.

Free parking. On-site parking. Private medical insurance, subject to company. scheme eligibility. Employee assistance. programme. Cycle-to-work scheme. Company events. Company pension. Sick pay.