I Didn’t Start With Health & Safety. I Started With the Tools.

I’ll be honest — I never started my apprenticeship because I wanted to be a plumber.

My husband has been a tradie since before we met, so the trades were never completely unfamiliar to me. I’d spent years around the business, hearing about jobs, problems, deadlines, customers and everything else that comes with running a trade business.

I knew what tradies did ….. Or at least, I thought I did.

I started my apprenticeship because I wanted to help my husband's team when they needed an extra pair of hands.

And, being a licensed trade, there was a practical side to it too. If I was going to be involved and actually help out on site, we wanted to do it properly — learning the trade, working within the limits of my training and under the appropriate supervision.

But there was another reason too - I wanted to get out of the office.

After spending years in a classroom, going from teaching into an office was a huge adjustment. I was used to noise, people, movement and being on my feet. Suddenly, I was sitting behind a desk.

So when there was an opportunity to get out, help the team and do something practical, I thought — why not?

If I was going to hang around, I figured I might as well be useful where I could.

And so I got on the tools.

What started as helping out turned into an apprenticeship — and an experience that gave me a completely different perspective on something I already thought I understood.

Because there's a big difference between knowing about someone's job and actually experiencing it.

I'd heard about the pressures of the trade from my husband. I'd seen the business side of it. I'd been around the conversations and understood that the work wasn't always straightforward.

But being on site is different.

You're not hearing about the awkward job afterwards — you're standing in it.

You're not hearing that something didn't go to plan — you're working out what to do next.

You're not just hearing about the physical demands — you're feeling them.

And you start to experience all the little things that don't necessarily make it back to the office.

The early starts.

The weather.

The awkward spaces.

The physical work.

The pressure to get the job finished.

The problem-solving.

The juggling of deadlines, materials, customers and other trades.

The constant decisions that have to be made along the way.

I also learnt a whole new language.

I learnt the names for fittings and tools I probably wouldn't have known otherwise. I developed a favourite spanner. Multi-grips became a tool I genuinely appreciated. And somewhere along the way, I even developed a favourite power tool brand.

Those little things might sound insignificant, but they were part of actually learning the trade.

I wasn't just hearing about it anymore.

I was experiencing it.

And that gave me something I didn't expect — a much deeper respect for tradies.

It's easy to look at a job from the outside and think:

"Why don't they just do it this way?"

It's very different when you're the person who actually has to make it work.

When you're standing in a difficult space.

When the thing you expected to find isn't there.

When the job has taken longer than planned.

When another trade has changed something.

When you've got a customer waiting.

When you've got a deadline.

When you're tired and still have to make a good decision.

That's when you start to understand the pressures that sit behind the work.

And that understanding came before I went further into health and safety.

It has shaped how I approach H&S ever since.

Because I don't want to be the person sitting behind a desk telling someone on site how they should do their job without understanding what their job actually involves.

I don't want safety systems that look great on paper but don't work when they're taken onto a real worksite.

And I don't want to assume that when someone doesn't follow a process, it's simply because they don't care about safety.

Sometimes there's a whole lot more going on.

Good health and safety has to work in the real world.

It has to account for the job, the environment, the people, the pressures and the reality of getting the work done.

My apprenticeship wasn't part of some carefully thought-out career plan.

It started with wanting to help my husband's team, get out of the office and do something practical.

It also meant I could properly participate in the trade within the boundaries of my apprenticeship, rather than simply being an extra pair of hands on the sidelines.

But along the way, it changed something for me.

I went from understanding the trade largely through the people around me and the office side of the business to experiencing it for myself.

And I gained something I didn't expect — a genuine respect for the people who work in the trades and a much better understanding of what they're up against.

The tools came before the clipboard.

And I'm glad they did.

Because before you can genuinely help keep people safe, I think you need to understand the people you're trying to keep safe.