Having just returned from a business trip in Thailand, our Managing Director, Ekrem Mahmutaj, is currently full of tales about the places he visited and the people he met.
A strong believer in the philosophy that travel opens up your mind, he’s also been using this trip to demonstrate how travel can actually offer huge benefits for business people. In a slight detour from our normal topics, why not read this week’s blog to see what you could be learning by taking a voyage.
Back in November last year, we reported on a free masterclass for bricklayers that was being offered by the Home Builders Federation (HBF) and how an equivalent opportunity would soon be made available for roofers.
This month, the HBF have released that opportunity so, if improving your roofing skills is on your ‘to do’ list, read on.
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.
Schools and colleges have broken up and, aside from the unpredictable weather, this means lots of young people will now be nervously waiting for their exam results and preparing for the next stage of their life.
While some will know exactly what they want to do, others might still be considering the options. For anyone considering a career in construction but not knowing where to start, we’ve got three steps you could follow in this week’s blog.
Whilst modern techniques, tools and innovations have brought some changes to the way on-site construction workers perform their duties, they still generally have to carry out physically demanding tasks in sometimes harsh conditions.
Day after day, year after year, you might think that surely such labour takes its toll, so how is it the case that, even as the workforce ages, a great many construction workers remain physically able to handle the strain? The answer it appears is because they have ‘physical wisdom’. Find out what this means 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.
Earlier this month, we reported on how the construction industry in the UK will need over a quarter of a million extra workers by 2026, including 26,000 in Greater London and 24,600 across the East of England.
This is going to be a real challenge, not least because the numbers of young people looking to enter the sector are far below the numbers of older workers who are leaving their trade. One YouGov Omnibus survey found that only 3% of young people aged 18-24 had searched for a job in construction.
As schools and colleges across the country come to a close, it’s likely there are a great many young people who haven’t fully decided what to do next. To help, we thought we’d share what we know about some of the key construction trades and so the focus of today’s blog is roofing.
As we near the end of August, you can’t help but notice all the ‘back to school’ signs and merchandise laid out at the front of the shops. This got us thinking about how, nowadays, the idea of getting back into learning mode is no longer reserved just for children and young people. The principle of ‘lifelong learning’ has long been something that many adults have embraced but, as our world continues to change at such a fast pace, this seems to be becoming more important than ever. In this week’s blog, we’re exploring the multiple professional and personal benefits that following this approach offers.
To succeed in construction today and over the coming decades, the workforce needs to think about a continuous skills upgrade. We’re not only talking about the technical skills or upgrades required by particular trades. For anyone working in construction to make a leap from ‘good’ to ‘great’ performance, there are a host of other skills and knowledge that should be also nurtured. This week’s blog includes three steps which construction companies can use to encourage a culture of life-long learning plus some great examples of the online training options available.
In case you missed it, Rishi Sunak presented the government’s Spring Budget yesterday. Unsurprisingly, the global pandemic and the billions of pounds of national expenditure that it has made necessary dominated what Sunak had to say. There were also several announcements which will undoubtedly have an impact on construction. To save you time, in this week’s blog, we’ve picked out some of the key measures.