Insulation specialist Actis is encouraging young people to pursue a career in construction amidst students receiving their GCSE results today [22 August].
The firm has urged that the industry needs more people to work in areas such as architecture, planning, quantity surveying, land acquisition, infrastructure and legal work, as well as practical skills like bricklaying and carpentry if it is to achieve the government 1.5 million houses target.
The Skills England Bill is aimed at addressing this severe labour shortage in the construction industry and, along with the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, should pave the way towards creating the homes the government plans to deliver over the coming five years.
>>Read more about Skills England here.
Actis UK and Ireland sales director Mark Cooper says a key element in achieving this aim is to ramp up training opportunities for young people within the construction industry.
The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) says 250,000 new workers will be required between now and 2028 to achieve this target and the NHBC has added that current build volumes must more than double to hit the government’s goal.
The desire to work in construction is there, at least in younger childhood, according to a recent survey of 100,000 young people by the Careers and Enterprise Company (CEC), which found that it is one of the preferred career paths for students by the time they reach 11 years old.
Furthermore, the CITB has seen almost one million visits to its Go Construct website so far this year, with a third of users under 18 and 33% identifying as female.
Women in Construction ambassador and Actis northern regional sales director Jemma Harris has been involved in a CITB careers event and addressed students at a school in Yorkshire, with the aim of inspiring young women to follow a career in a male-dominated profession.
Northern regional specification manager Amaret Chahal, who has co-written some of Actis’ CPD training material, recently spoke to students at Barnsley College about the joy of construction.
Meanwhile, south-west area sales manager Tom Hendzel has helped out with lectures to construction trainees at Cornwall’s Truro and Penwith College.
The government’s pincer movement – of speeding up new homes delivery through its Planning and Infrastructure Bill and training more people to have the skills to enable this to happen – will also need to involve an increase in Modern Methods of Construction, explained Mark.
