A successful career doesn’t need to look one way, explains electrician-turned-founder David Cox.
David Cox has been running Turnua, his infrastructure management company, for more than five years now. He is not a first-time founder, having previously established Secto and ProcessUs, which has since been acquired by Hikari.
But the seasoned founder and managing director began his career as an electrician apprentice, and he tells SiliconRepublic.com that this “invaluable experience” positively shaped the trajectory of his career moving forward.
Transformational experience
Cox started off as an electrician’s apprentice in the 90s as a teenager just out of secondary school. Working as a novice under a large electrical contractor was “exciting” he tells me.
The days were “long [and] hard”, the job was tough, and “it didn’t feel amazing [at the time]”, but the lessons he learned were “absolutely transformational”, he says.
According to Cox, the practical nature of problem-solving in real-world environments is a key lesson from apprenticeships that is sometimes missed in more academic-based learnings.
Plus, hands-on learning teaches you to work in a team, have real responsibilities, deadlines and gives a better idea of what it is like to work on the job. In short, according to Cox, “it gives you the right kick in the arse that you need”.
After spending his rookie years as an apprentice, Cox worked as a qualified electrician for the same company for a few more years before moving on to Meteor Mobile, where he built critical power systems on telecommunication sites.
A few years later, he found himself in the corporate world as a manager, and further on, as a change manager at Eir Ireland, where he oversaw the consolidation of Eircom’s data centres.
Cox’s learnings from his trade days anchored him throughout his career, he says, but he still viewed academia as a vital part of his overall career growth. In order to compliment his practical learnings, Cox went on to get a degree in technology management from Institute of Technology Tallaght, which is now Technological University Dublin’s Tallaght campus.
“It’s not about one being better,” he says. “University delivers theory, apprenticeships deliver practise. Ireland needs both, valued equally, with clear pathways between them.” The best thing to do is to “layer” education, Cox suggests.
Meanwhile, Cox’s entrepreneurial journey presented itself when he was given the opportunity to take redundancy from his previous job.
“I took redundancy and I started my first business along with another partner. We grew that business from zero to about $20m in turnover over about six to seven years. And I had a successful exit on that business.”
Anchoring this success was his training as an apprentice, he tells me. “My apprenticeship taught me accountability. If you don’t wire it right, the lights don’t come on. That principle underpins how we run Turnua today.”
Turnua is a specialist in delivering critical infrastructure across subsea telecommunications, data centres, healthcare, utilities and AI environments.
Operating across Ireland, the UK and the US, the company provides end-to-end solutions from design and build to ongoing operations.
“I know what good looks like,” he further elaborates. “My electrical background is absolutely invaluable for me in what I’ve done.
“I’ve had to learn business training and I’ve had to learn on all other types of leadership training through the years. But absolutely, as a foundational piece to my development, it’s absolutely second to none.”
‘Cultural issue’
Apprenticeships aren’t as popular anymore, and this is a “cultural issue”, Cox says. Apprenticeships “haven’t been as valued or seen as [providing] the same level of success [academia]”.
“We’ve kind of said the only path to success is you do your Leaving Cert and you go on to university.
“Well, actually there’s other paths. There’s vocational, there’s technical training. There’s on-the-job training, there’s apprenticeships…There’s all sorts.”
Ireland offers wide-ranging apprenticeship courses, from insurance practice, manufacturing engineering to laboratory technicians, among others.
Cox, however, says that more can be done. “Progress has been made, but apprenticeships still lack the visibility, investment and recognition of higher education. More places, stronger school pathways and awareness campaigns are vital,” he says, to changing how people view this type of learning.
In addition, he says that Ireland needs to “broaden” the perspective around what apprenticeships can look like. “We [only] talk about electrical…construction trades”. But there’s more, he says – these are not just “for the lads”.
“We need to change the narrative. We need to incentivise young people to look at apprenticeships as a real opportunity to develop and to contribute and to earn what they’re learning, but also to earn and develop their careers.”
There has been some support for apprenticeships as a means to address the skills shortage in Ireland. And although not the popular route, companies such as Ryanair provide apprenticeships as a gateway into an engineering career.
Skilled trade will help fill Ireland’s critical infrastructure gap, Cox says. “We talk about the shortfall in trades and construction workers…apprenticeships are a huge answer to that problem.”
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