A portfolio placement is time spent working alongside a Gas Safe registered engineer on live jobs, so you can build the supervised on-site evidence your training centre requires. Most centres teach the classroom part and then expect you to arrange that part yourself, which is where people get stuck.
The exact evidence you need depends on the requirements that apply to your programme and the paperwork issued through your training centre.
Where people look
In rough order of how most people try:
- Someone you already know. A relative, a mate, the firm you did your work experience with. Cheapest route by far, and the one worth exhausting first.
- Local firms, cold. Ringing round heating companies and asking to shadow an engineer. It works occasionally, and it is a numbers game.
- Your training centre. Some centres run their own placements or have engineers they refer students to. Always worth asking, because they know exactly what their own paperwork needs.
- A paid placement. A company that takes you out on its own jobs and builds the evidence with you. Costs money, but the work is already booked and the evidence is the point of the day rather than an afterthought.
What a good placement gives you
Being on site is not the same as filling a portfolio. The things that actually matter:
- Enough work, of the right kind. A portfolio is usually built from 20 to 30 jobs across a spread of job types. If the engineer you are with only does one kind of work, you cannot finish on their jobs alone.
- Evidence captured as you go. Photographs and paperwork taken while the work is happening, not reconstructed from memory weeks later.
- Someone who reads your requirements. Your centre sets the requirements. A placement that has never looked at them is guessing at what you need.
- Sign-off that follows the work. Where the required work has been done under the appropriate supervision, the relevant engineer completes the evidence and sign-off. That is the end point the whole thing is aiming at.
The warning signs
Three things we see again and again in placements that have gone wrong. They are worth knowing before you commit months to one.
- Not combining jobs. This is the big one. A boiler service and a repair carried out on the same visit are two jobs, not one. If that visit also turns up an At Risk situation, that is a third piece of evidence from the same doorstep. Trainees who treat every requirement as its own separate visit end up needing two or three times as many days as they actually need.
- Not enough work to go round. Some engineers do not have the volume of jobs to fill a portfolio, or they do not take the trainee along to enough of the ones they do have. Either way the portfolio stalls, and it is usually months before anyone admits it is not working.
- Being kept on as free labour. A trainee who is useful on site is worth keeping on site. Some arrangements drag on for exactly that reason: the work keeps getting done and the sign-off keeps not happening. If the end date keeps moving and nobody can tell you what evidence is still outstanding, that is the sign.
There is more on all three, and on how much time each one costs you, in why portfolios take longer than they should.
What it costs
An unpaid placement with someone you know costs nothing but time. A paid placement costs what the company charges, and the fair question to ask is what you get for it: how the work is planned, what happens if the job types you need do not come up, and when sign-off happens.
Ours is £450 inc VAT, paid in stages rather than up front, covering the review, the on-site work, the evidence, the organising and the sign-off. Travel to site is not included — you make your own way to the job and meet the engineer there. The full breakdown is on the pricing page.
What to do next
Dig out the portfolio paperwork your training centre gave you before you ring anyone. Whoever takes you on, the first useful conversation is about what evidence is still outstanding — and you cannot have it without the requirements in front of you.
We meet, go through your portfolio together, and work out how many jobs you still need and how long it is going to take. If that is useful to you, the suitability check is free and there is no payment when you enquire.