The Career Most People Never Hear About Working as a Vacuum Excavation Operator

Some people think the industry’s got a recruiting problem, the vacuum excavator industry.

I don’t think there’s a clear pathway either from college.

I genuinely could not give you a standard brief on what I would like to see coming through the door as a new trainee Vac-Ex operator. It’s surprising how many of them say, “This is actually quite difficult.” It’s a technical role.

Yeah. I don’t think there’s anything more exciting than driving a 32-ton truck across country with a full tip and then taking out a powered arm and sucking the ground away. You know what I mean? I think it’s quite exciting.

I don’t know about you, Pete, but I did not have a clue what vacuum excavation was before I came into this business. I just didn’t know they did it. I thought, you know, you excavate with a digger and a shovel and a spade. I didn’t know that option was out there. So, had you heard of it before?

No, not really. Like I said, you think it’s some sort of sewage sucker, don’t you?

Yeah.

But then the more and more you look into it, you actually think, well, actually, yeah. You can understand why they do it.

A lot of sites are mandating that you have to have it now, aren’t they? Some of the tier ones are saying that, especially in gas and water and where it’s high risk.

Yeah.

And they mandate you must have Vac-Ex on site now. But yeah, it’s surprising how many people haven’t heard about it, isn’t it? I mean, everybody I speak to in my social circles and such, they don’t know. It’s only been around about 10 years or something, has it? 10, 12 years now.

It is. It has taken off, and in Europe as well, but people still don’t know what it is. I mean, you speak to some guys from the construction industry and they don’t even know what it is.

Yeah.

So, it’s a fascinating concept and activity.

I don’t think there’s a clear pathway either from college. I mean, most people would get into construction by becoming a bricklayer or—

Yeah, it’s the traditional sort of—

Or excavator operator, something like that. And I think there’s no sort of clear pathway in that area for it.

No, I agree. And we’ve seen it. We take guys that potentially have left school with nothing.

Yeah.

And obviously we like the HGV Class 2 lads because it’s less of a training burden for us to train them on driving the vehicles, but we take guys without it. Obviously these guys have left school with very few qualifications. That limits their prospects.

They come to Vac-Ex, we train them, we qualify them, as you’ve said, to NVQ Level 3 and all that sort of good stuff, and the earning potential is phenomenal. I’m not going to talk figures here, but it’s a bloody good wage.

Yeah, it is.

And we can certainly explain that pathway when they apply for a job with us. We try to advertise that as well, don’t we? What the pathway looks like.

What I’ve noticed recently is there are a lot of companies just popping up everywhere now, aren’t there?

Yeah. I think the demand for vacuum excavation is obviously increasing and people are trying to satisfy the demand, but I don’t think they understand the burden that comes with it – maintenance, training, all the other sort of good stuff.

Compliance.

So, I think it’s very difficult for a one or two-man band to manage it. Some will – they’ve got to start somewhere, obviously – but we are, without argument, the industry leaders when it comes to the training and obviously the quality that we put out there with our operators and our vehicles.

When we get new starters, they generally think because it’s a truck, it’s a driving job. And it’s not a driving job. You’re literally driving the piece of equipment to the place of work. That’s your mode of transport, effectively. The fact that it’s on a truck means you can manoeuvre it and get it around where it needs to be.

The role is a vacuum excavator operator. The secondary task is being a driver.

Yeah.

That’s what we struggle to break a lot of them out of, don’t we? They think they come here as a driver because a lot of them do come with Class 2 HGV, Cat C.

Yeah, we struggle to get them out of that mindset: “Oh, I’m a driver.” It’s not like that.

It’s not a traditional construction role either. You get it in the pub, don’t you? “Oh, you lads knock off at 12 o’clock on a Friday.” We don’t.

We’re literally there to the end because they’re paying a lot of money to have us there, so they want the value.

It’s not a traditional construction role, albeit it’s in the construction environment. So, it’s a bit odd for the lads. I think some of them, especially lads that have come out of the construction world, struggle with it sometimes.

There’s a lot of lads outside at the minute. I don’t know what th