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Name: Phil Scott
Rank on Exit: Sargeant
Years of Service: 22 Years
Qualifications Gained: Gastec Gat Instalation Course
With 22 years’ service to his name, RAF musician Sgt Phil Scott, 40, plans an exit date of August 2010, and is looking forward to spending more time with his family. As a tuba player with the RAF, his job involves ‘all aspects of ceremonial work within the Services. Whenever you see a military band performing, that’s what I do!’ He says that, although he loves ‘being part of an organisation that offers a varied workload and being paid to do a job that started out as a hobby, the antisocial hours and weekend work are the main sticking points for me. It’s OK as a youngster but not so good for family life.’
Although he has not yet left the Forces, the skills he has acquired while in uniform that he thinks will prove useful once he does so are ‘confidence, reliability, punctuality and management/personnel skills’. He has already attended a CTW, which he says was useful in that ‘it helped make sure I was aware of all the options, and outlined various possibilities’.
Of the training course he undertook with GasTec he says, ‘it was very professional and extremely useful’. Vitally, as he intends to pursue the self-employed route, he comments, ‘I’m now confident enough to start my own business.’
Though ‘not at leaving point yet’, he is ‘already pulling in work to build up my client base. The plan is to have a seamless transition into my own work schedule and increase my salary considerably. I am looking to pull in a salary in excess of £40k. I am already starting to build a substantial client base, so by the time I leave the Forces I should be well on the way. Add my pension and it looks very attractive indeed.’
When asked about the likely similarities between his time with the RAF and his new career, he laughs: ‘The only remote similarity is the “pipework”. I’ve switched from playing a tuba, which is basically a very long brass pipe, to working with various sizes of copper pipework for gas installations!’ On a more serious note, he comments, ‘the main difference will be working for and being answerable only to myself, and doing something completely different from what I have known since leaving school.’
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