Apprenticeship gave new President the perfect start

HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, recently spoke to him about his professional background, hopes, and plans, and how he will be aiming to build on Pete Sellars’ ‘Five key themes’, as well as introducing his own ‘vision’ for the Institute.

Ian Hinitt, who is currently interim deputy director of Estates at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust, explained when I spoke to him by phone recently that he is proud to have begun his working life, in 1978, as a tradesman fitter at Bradford Area Health Authority. He said: “The skills I learnt as a tradesman are, for me, the very best of life skills, and instilled in me a strong team-working ethic, self-reliance, resilience, and a life-long passion for innovation – all born out of my craft apprenticeship training.” His early working life was ‘not based on disposability of consumables, but rather on a culture of experiential learning to effect repair and adaptability’. He said: “There was no throwaway culture; parts were repaired or made, and if there wasn’t a tool for the repair, you made that as well.” On reflection, this was, to him, ‘the very essence of sustainability’. 

Recalling the period when he was about to leave school, he said: “The higher education prospects for school-leavers like me in Yorkshire (he attended Bradford Bellevue Boys’ Grammar School) in the late 1970s were limited, and a university education not an option; this was simply not in our family culture, nor that of the modern secondary education system in the North of England. There were limited discussions with school careers advisors, although an apprenticeship as a technician did offer a stepping stone for upward mobility and progression from craftsmanship.