Kayleigh Simm is the only female in her apprentice cohort at Newcastle-based KMF – but that does not stop her drive and passion for engineering shining through. Her employers say she has made “absolutely outstanding progress” in the 18 months she has been with them so far.

From a young age, Kayleigh had a keen interest in engineering from watching TV programmes with her dad and in her own words: “I’ve always wanted to learn how to make the products that I was seeing on the television.”

Before joining KMF in August 2022 the 19-year-old did a Level 3 BTEC in Advanced Manufacturing Engineering at Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group (NSCG) which fuelled her passion for engineering. Whilst there she won The NSCG Principal’s Vocational Award in 2022, a sign of her talent, attitude and desire to reach her full potential.

Jenny Johnston, People and Culture Manager at KMF, said: “She is an extremely driven and talented young person who has made an outstanding impression within the company. A sign of the esteem that Kayleigh is held in can be seen by how many school and college careers fairs that she has led with the KMF team (15 in total so far), plus acted as an outstanding apprentice advocate on our Apprenticeship Open Day to over 140 visitors.

“As well as being extremely bright (she won the Academic Achievement Award at our last KMF Apprentice Awards), Kayleigh has the personal skills and qualities that really do show both herself and the company in a great light to others.

“An example of her willingness to develop herself and help others is that Kayleigh never says no to CSR and charity work on behalf of the company and is always the first to volunteer.

“More recently, Kayleigh has received her diploma results and has achieved distinctions across all units, an achievement not yet seen by any apprentice at KMF. Since opening the KMF training facility we have trained more than 200 engineering apprentices.

“Kayleigh has plenty of other experience helping us with our community work, as she is an integral part of a team that led STEM activities in a number of local schools throughout the school holidays. This STEM team were absolutely superb in everything that they did, especially when you consider that they had to go into a wide range of educational establishments – and we know from experience that schoolchildren are often the harshest critics of all! It was a steep but enjoyable learning curve for our apprentices, but Kayleigh was brilliant and the verbal feedback that she had was outstanding.

“Kayleigh has a fantastic work ethic, a mature attitude towards all that she does, and we feel that she will have an exceptional career. She is looking to undertake a degree in Manufacturing Engineering and then potentially teaching after that.

“She develops positive, productive working relationships with others, boasts superb organisational skills and revels in situations where she can support her peers.”

Jenny has nominated Kayleigh Simm in the Apprentice of the Year category of University of Staffordshire Business Awards.