Thousands of brickies and roofers across England, Wales and Scotland are set to benefit from a major new fully-funded training initiative that aims to upskill the workforce and address common defects.
As part of the industry’s ongoing commitment to building quality homes and with CITB funding, the Home Builders Federation’s (HBF) ‘Home Building Skills Partnership’ has begun delivering a series of brickwork masterclasses and will be rolling out brand-new roofing masterclasses soon. Find out more about these free training opportunities in this week’s blog.
In its ‘State of the Trade’ survey, published last October, the Federation of Master Builders found that 60% of small-to-medium sized construction companies had pressed the pause button on jobs due to a lack of skilled tradespeople. 12% had cancelled work due to a lack of skilled tradespeople and 45% were particularly struggling to hire bricklayers.
A key problem is that the industry has an ageing workforce and young Brits are shying away from entering traditional trades. Some suggest that young people ‘leave’ our industry as young as 12 years old! Sounds weird but think about it. Pre-schoolers and primary schoolkids love the idea of building things (influenced perhaps by ‘Bob the Builder’ and games like Minecraft). But, something changes as they reach their teenage years and suddenly construction is seen as ‘dirty work’ or something for ‘those who don’t go to college’.
So, in today’s blog, we’re going to try to dispel some of those negative ideas and showcase what it really means to be a bricklayer.
In last week’s blog, we talked about several upcoming trends in construction with an increase in the use of robots being one of the things many people in the industry are expecting to see this year.
Just a week later, we hear news of an innovative bricklaying robot that’s just secured accreditation from the housing warranty and insurance provider, NHBC.
Could the rise of the robots be about to begin? Keep reading to find out more…
It’s no secret that the construction industry has been facing skills shortages for a considerable length of time. With unemployment rising and further job losses on the horizon (the impact of Covid-19) coupled with what some are calling the ‘Brexodus’ effect when it comes to using (or rather losing) EU labour, the obvious solutions are…
The brickwork division at Sheriff Construction have recently been showing off their creative side at one of our sites in Luton. Given its prominent position in the Round Green area, many people have seen how our Tavern Court development looks from the outside. Not so many people will have seen how things look inside where,…