ATNZ Apprentice of the Year Josiah Barlow has always wanted to understand how things work. That curiosity shapes how he approaches his trade: learn the principles, seek out knowledge, ask questions and keep building on what you know.
Long before Josiah knew what machining was, that instinct was already there. His mother remembers taking him to children's music activities as a toddler. While the other children joined in, Josiah would examine the radiator on the wall, trying to work out how it worked.
Growing up in a predominantly white-collar family, Josiah had little exposure to the trades. His interest in making and designing things led him to university to study industrial design before COVID disrupted his studies.
He eventually joined We Can Precision Engineering and began an ATNZ apprenticeship in Mechanical Engineering.
The moment it clicked
A few months after arriving at We Can, Josiah was making aluminium blocks for the workshop's compressed-air system when he needed to calculate the correct hole size for a BSP thread. He asked then-manager Keith McLean for help.
Until then, much of Josiah's practical learning had been self-directed, searching online, experimenting in his garage and piecing information together. Meeting Keith changed that. He had a rare ability to make something complicated understandable, and Josiah quickly recognised how much he could learn from someone with decades of knowledge and the ability to explain it clearly.
Three years later, one of the clearest measures of Josiah's progress is the work people now trust him to do. In the machine shop, that includes rush jobs. What began with smaller, closely supervised tasks has developed into larger, more demanding work, reflecting growing confidence in his judgement and ability.
That trust has led to an interim foreman role, with responsibilities including quoting work, allocating jobs and helping keep the workshop moving. Yet he is in no hurry to leave the machines behind, conscious that there is still valuable experience to gain on the tools.
Building on the foundations
Josiah remembers the first year and a half of his ATNZ apprenticeship as a “real slog”. Looking back, he now sees that period differently. The mathematics and machining principles he was learning laid the foundation for the more advanced work that followed.
As he progressed into CNC machining, those principles began to align with the work in front of him. Experienced tradespeople added another layer: how to apply them when the reality of a job does not fit neatly into the ideal.
That combination has also drawn Josiah towards knowledge he sees as increasingly rare. Fascinated by gear calculations, he has taught himself specialist geometry and calculation methods because he believes there is value in preserving knowledge that could otherwise be lost. Old engineering and machining books hold a similar fascination.
At the same time, he continues developing his skills on modern CNC machinery. For Josiah, traditional and contemporary machining are not competing approaches. Understanding both gives him a broader knowledge base to draw on when solving problems.
It takes a workshop to make an apprentice
Simply putting an apprentice alongside a tradesperson and expecting knowledge to transfer through “osmosis”, as Josiah puts it, is not enough. However busy the workshop was, Keith made time to explain not only how something should be done but why.
For Josiah, it takes a workshop to make an apprentice, but responsibility runs both ways. The workplace has to create opportunities and share knowledge; the apprentice has to make the most of them. His approach has been to actively seek out opportunities to learn and gain experience rather than wait for them to arrive.
Around that workplace learning, ATNZ provides the structure that keeps his apprenticeship progressing. His Account Managers keep clear what he has completed, what comes next, and where he is heading, while leaving him responsible for driving his own development.
For a self-directed learner, that balance matters: enough structure to keep his training moving, with the independence to pursue the knowledge and experience around him.
“The best of these guys”
Becoming ATNZ Apprentice of the Year was never Josiah's goal. He remembers instead looking around the workshop at tradespeople he admired and thinking about the kind of tradesperson he wanted to become.
“I vividly remember thinking that it would be really cool if I could be the best of these guys.”
He doesn't mean being better than them. His ambition is to learn from them: to identify the best qualities, knowledge and experience of the people around him and build those lessons into the tradesperson he becomes.
That philosophy says a lot about Josiah's approach. Success matters less to him than the process of getting better: learning the principles, seeking out experience, asking questions, and continuing to build on what he knows.
The recognition came later. Josiah was named ATNZ Apprentice of the Year and received the Bill Buckley Engineering Scholarship. By then, the trust placed in him was already evident. When an urgent breakdown at Wattie's required a large replacement gear, machinery had to be adapted to accommodate it. Josiah was given the job and trusted to deliver it.
His interim foreman role has broadened his understanding of the commercial side of the workshop, while his scholarship is reconnecting him with the industrial design interests that first drew him towards making things. He is now exploring how design and manufacturing might eventually come together.
He does not have every step mapped out. What matters more is the way he approaches whatever comes next.
“That's the attitude that's served me best: not to focus on the success but on the process of getting there. If you do the process correctly, the end result is good.”
The toddler who once ignored the music to investigate the radiator is still driven by essentially the same instinct: to understand how something works, why it works and how he might do it better.
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