Industry updates

South Thames College are hosting a free Jobs and Skills Fair to provide an overview of the opportunities in the Construction Industry.

The construction industry offers various career opportunities, whether it be as an electrician, plumber, site manager, carpenter, bricklayer to name a few.

Attend this event to meet employers and see what vacancies and opportunities are available and apply on the day. Exhibitors include Galliard Homes, Switched On London, Mace, Ardmore, Sir Robert McAlpine, Wandsworth Work Match and many others.

The event is taking place at South Thames College, Wandsworth, SW18 2PP from 10am - 1pm on the 15 March 2022. To register for this Jobs and Skill Fair, please email [email protected].

The Mayor’s Workforce Integration Network launched its inclusive employers toolkit in October 2020, which aims to help companies increase recruitment, retention and progression of young Black men within their workforces. The toolkit is for use by senior leaders and recruitment staff within companies in the construction and digital technology industries, and their suppliers. It will equip employers with practical tools and examples of good practice from within these sectors.

Lighthouse Club (The Construction Industry) are a CITB fully approved training organisation (ATO). These training courses form part of the Building Mental Health five-step framework, so whether you’re just starting out on implementing a positive mental health culture or you’ve already started your journey, these courses will ensure that you have a robust wellbeing strategy in your organisation.

Click here to access free courses until the end of the year.

The Covid-19 pandemic has meant most work, learning and wellbeing support has moved online. With many Londoners looking for work, furloughed or simply motivated to gain new skills, the GLA have collated a set of resources that will help users to access courses, careers guidance and health and wellbeing support

Visit the website for more information: /coronavirus/skills-and-employment-hub

Turning Point is a deferred prosecution scheme operating in North West London whereby low-level or first time offenders (subject to a strict eligibility criteria) enter into a bespoke, police-managed contract as a means to avoid incurring a criminal record. This contract aims to address the root causes of their offending behaviour by imposing rehabilitative, reparative or restrictive conditions.

Turning Point is reliant on existing services providers and are keen to expand our partnerships across the area. If you’re able to offer employment, education or similar opportunities and would like to discuss a potential partnership, please email [email protected]

Building People is an online platform that brings together opportunities across the built environment, including resources, knowledge and support, events and vacancies. Building People are passionate about enabling employers to widen their talent pools.

Here's how you can get involved:

• Keen to promote your work opportunities, events and activities to diverse audiences? Register your organisation or initiative with Building People.
• Do you work with diverse and under-represented groups? Join our Communities network.
• Interested in making Building People an industry-wide reality? Become a supporter or partner.

CITB has announced its plan to help employers recover from the impact of Coronavirus, including a substantial reduction in Levy bills. The Skills Stability Plan 2020-21 protects apprenticeships and provides direct funding to employers to adopt new ways of working needed in the wake of Covid-19.

Visit your local job brokerage service to support you with training and job opportunities. Services may include:

• Improving your CV;
• Identifying career opportunities;
• Advising on jobs that best suit your skills.

To find your local authority job brokerage service, please click here.

If your organisation would like to be included in this register, please write to [email protected].

Jobcentre Plus offers support for employers to help your business overcome challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether you are needing to expand rapidly, or worried about redundancies, you can find advice on next steps and the best ways to support your staff.

Free school resources for industry professionals and teachers!

Construction Youth Trust have developed and piloted a suite of online resources to inspire young people about careers in the construction and built environment sector.

The Contextualised Curriculum project, funded by the CITB and delivered in partnership with the London Regional Construction Training Group, provides industry professionals and teachers with a range of curriculum linked sessions that champion construction and built environment careers.

Developed in partnership with both industry and schools, the sessions blend students’ existing skills and learning with real world-of-work scenarios. The sessions contextualise students’ learning and allow them to gain an understanding of why what they learn at school is relevant to the wider working world. For students at risk of becoming disengaged with school, giving them practical demonstrations of the importance of their learning can revitalise their interest and reengage them with their education. The employer led engagements also help schools to meet the mandatory Gatsby benchmarks.

You can find the entire suite of available Contextualised Curriculum sessions here.

All the sessions are free and you can download and use as many as you wish! Download an overview of all sessions here.

For each session there is a detailed resource pack including:

• A session plan— a step by step guide for the delivery of the session
• Student worksheets—printable versions of worksheets specific to each session
• Resources— including session PowerPoint, additional information sheets and activities

There is also a handy How To Guide to help you make the most of the Contextualised Curriculum resources and support you in running engaging sessions in your local schools.

BuildUK’s work experience guide is a useful guide for employers, including SME's, that need work experience guidance. Details include when to declare work experience to your insurers, sample project plans, and more.

Interested in a career in construction and not sure what jobs in construction might be for you? Visit GoConstruct to learn more about construction and routes into construction, including a quiz that will help you find out which roles are most suited to your interests, skills and qualifications.

The Mayor’s Good Work Standard sets a benchmark for good employment practice in pay, workplace well-being, diversity, recruitment, skills and progression. Over 60 employers are now accredited, covering 200,000 Londoners in working in sectors like retail, care, finance, and engineering. Start your good work journey here.

The London Business Hub is an independent, free service connecting London’s entrepreneurs, microbusinesses and SMEs to a vast business support offer, supplemented by a network of business support.

LPC

Introducing the London Progression Collaboration. The Institute for Public Policy Research, in partnership with the Mayor of London, has established a new team dedicated to supporting employers to set up good quality apprenticeships. The team provides free support to employers of all sizes, helping with apprenticeship strategy and levy transfer brokerage, and establishing a knowledge transfer network.

Reskilling the Recovery

Leading construction businesses came forward in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, pledging their unspent apprenticeship levy funding to support training in small construction firms. The London Progression Collaboration (LPC) received support from major construction businesses including Foster + Partners, National Grid, MACE Group, The Clancy Group, Wilmott Dixon and Osborne.

Through the new initiative smaller construction firms can apply to the LPC for apprenticeship levy funding, helping them to save money and access training where government funding is not available.

In total, the LPC’s Reskilling the Recovery campaign has raised £3.5million of apprenticeship levy funding. The LPC continues to welcome further donations and is currently receiving a high volume of applications for funding from small construction firms.

Visit the LPC’s website for further details and find out how to get in touch.

You can get in touch with LPC’s construction sector lead, Oscar Watkins. For more information, please read here.

Led by CECA and delivered by the Supply Chain School, the CITB funded programme has developed a toolkit for Fairness Inclusion and Respect (FIR) in the construction industry. This range of free resources, including workshops, e-learning tools and toolbox talks is available to anyone for use at any time, free of charge.

List of event can be accessed here.

The LEAN connects businesses and senior business volunteers with schools and colleges to help young people build the skills and experiences they need to lead successful futures. Supporting the Construction industry to engage with young people is a priority for the Network. Please email Daniel Chow to discuss how the LEAN can support you.

The STEM Ambassador programme has joined forces with CITB and Build UK to showcase the amazing career opportunities in construction and inspire young people to work in the industry. Click here for more information.

Black Professionals in Construction

The BPIC Network (Black Professionals in Construction) is a platform for black and ethnic minority professionals within the construction industry here in the UK and across the world. Their aim is to connect underrepresented groups within the industry and work directly with key organisations in order to champion the importance of diversity in the built environment.

As part of this, BPIC has created a minority owned construction supply chain portal, providing a centralised hub as well as helping industry connect with projects and developments. Contact BPIC to find out more about how you can get involved.

The Covid-19 Housing Delivery Taskforce, chaired and convened by Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development Tom Copley, is made up of leaders from across London’s housing delivery sector including councils, construction, unions, and housing associations.

View full report here.

The MCA London South Bank University Hub are holding a series of webinars with the aim to attract more women into construction and the built environment, whether they have a background in construction or not.

Dates and details for the upcoming webinars and links to register are below.

• 26 January: for those considering a career change. Register here.
• 2 February: dispelling the myths surrounding women in construction. Register here.
• 9 February: explores a range of apprenticeships available in construction and the built environment. Register here.

The Good Work Standard Team, Mayor’s Construction Academy and Workforce Integration Network invite you to an online session on diversity and inclusion in the construction sector at 2.00pm on the 3 November.

At a time when the construction sector faces unprecedented uncertainty, can investing in diversity and inclusion help employers meet challenges of the future? Increasing the diversity of your workforce has proven to boost financial performance and innovation. Join us for a candid discussion on the barriers to improving diversity in construction and practical advice on tools and resources to support employers.

The event welcomes senior leaders, D&I, HR and recruitment staff within companies in the built environment industry and their suppliers interested in taking real action on diversity and inclusion. Register here.

The Skills for Jobs White Paper was released by the government on the 21 January 2021. The White Paper sets out a bold and ambitious plan for the future of technical and professional education in England.

Read the White Paper here.

Mount Anvil are looking for your time to support the Makers & Mentors Mentoring programme, supported by the Mayor of London.

It’s a programme helping people make connections and grow skills across the full breadth of the construction and development sector. Mount Anvil has launched the programme to help make the construction industry more open and more diverse, providing equality of opportunity as mentoring helps level the playing field.

Mount Anvil is looking for Mentors and Mentees from all walks of development and construction life.

Mentors – Would it be impossible for you to commit just an hour a month for six months (minimum) to help break down the barriers within the industry and grow someone else’s career?

Mentees – Would you like some support and guidance from those already in the industry to help grow your career? You just need to be over 18 years old and either in or looking to start a career in the development industry.

To get involved, here’s a link to the sign-up form: https://makersandmentors.mountanvil.com/register.

Or for more information visit the Makers & Mentors website https://www.mountanvil.com/makers-mentors/makers-mentors/

By attending, you will understand:

• How we can achieve culture change surrounding mental health disclosure and support starting at the top.
• Why construction and why it's so important
• Recognising the signs & encouraging peer support
• Reducing stigma and changing attitude through good practice examples

Over the last two years, many employers have been offering industry placements - an extended period of structured time that a student spends in the workplace, developing meaningful skills and making a positive contribution to the organisation. They are also a fundamental part of the government’s reforms to technical education that includes T Levels.



Over the next month, the Department for Education and the Strategic Development Network (SDN) are hosting three webinars for employers, looking at industry placements in the following skill areas:

. Education and Childcare (10 Sept)

. Construction (15 Sept)

. Digital (23 Sept)



In the webinars, you’ll have a chance to hear from employers who are already hosting placements in these roles, how industry placement students might contribute to your workforce development in the current circumstances, and the support now available.



The session is free of charge. Employers can find out more and register here.

Email [email protected] for any questions regarding the sessions.

Join us to be inspired by industry trailblazers in agile and flexible working, and learn how they introduced good flexible / agile working practices pre-Covid-19, as well as how they have adapted to the 'new normal'. Hear about legal and safety obligations, and how managers can help ensure their approach creates positive and enabling environment for their team.

By attending this webinar, you will learn:

• What Fairness, Inclusion and Respect means
• Why it matters
• How to progress FIR within your own organisation

You will learn how to use the FIR Toolkit for the built environment. These are free-to-access resources, part funded by CITB and distributed through The Supply Chain Sustainability School. The FIR Toolkit was created by partners including CECA, Network Rail, Highways England, Skanska, VINCI Construction, BAM Construct UK, Balfour Beatty and GRAHAM Construction.

By the end of this session you will:

• Appreciate that disabled candidates are desirable because of the perspective and skills they offer
• Be able to identify key considerations in advertising and interviewing disabled talent so it's inclusive and attractive to a disabled person
• Be aware of the benefits of marketing your business as disability confident
• Understand how the Equalities Act plays a part in your advertising and recruitment

The Construction Leadership Council (CLC) will launch the Construction Talent Retention Scheme on Friday with the support of Minister for Business and Industry Nadhim Zahawi. Construction Enquirer will be hosting a webinar on the new online service on Tuesday 28 July from 2:00pm – 3:00pm to demonstrate how the scheme works. Registration via email.

A virtual London Construction event that provides a free-to-use platform for employers, Jobcentres, colleges, local authorities, charities and many others, to promote jobs, apprenticeships, training and construction opportunities. Running across social media as #ConstructLondon, the event will be delivered by the National Careers Service (London), the Mayor's Construction Academy and West London College and will target jobseekers, employers and anyone interested in discovering the array of exciting opportunities construction has to offer in London. An easy-to-use event guide showing how your organisation can take part in order to promote your activities and construction opportunities can be found here.

If you have any questions or would like to know more please do get in touch: Barry Mortimer [email protected] or call 07788 701055.

Agenda:

Introduction - The changing landscape. Why Apprenticeships are more important than ever. Kathryn Elliott Head of Business Development South Thames Colleges Group

The support we provide apprentices and how we have adapted over the past few months to ensure continued and improved support.

This free webinar series is designed to help London businesses manage and mitigate their exposure to the impact of coronavirus. From accessing loans, grants and schemes to addressing supply chain or stakeholder challenges, register to hear the latest advice from our expert presenters.

This series is part of the essential resources brought together by the London Growth Hub to help and support London businesses and employees.

This event has now passed. If you would like to watch a recording of the webinar please visit our webinar archive.

(Please note it can take a couple of days for webinars to show on the archive page)

• Tools needed to transition and manage your business online
• How to build or revamp your website
• Choose the right digital platforms to match your customers’ buying habits
• Create an effective action plan and implementation strategy

This event has now passed. A recording of the webinar can be found here.

The MCA was joined by twenty-four organisations representing employers in construction, including the CBI, the Home Builders Federation and Unite the Union, to discuss mental health and diversity, fairness and inclusion in the sector.

Some provoking questions were raised about the efficacy of Mental Health First Aid training, a popular route for many employers to address the mental wellbeing challenges the workforce faces. On reflection, although we were pleased to hear lots of good work is ongoing in the area of recruitment, it feels like we are still in the earliest stages of thinking about what diversity means for sector leadership.

We will explore the issues and ideas that surfaced in the session with employers over the coming months. We would be delighted to partner with organisations which feel they may have a role in leading some of these conversations. We will be developing practical, low/no-cost solutions to move forward in these areas with employers in the coming year or two.

The FT Diversity Leaders and McKinsey Delivering Through Diversity informed the summary notes ahead of this event. Warm congratulations to those employers who received recognition in the Diversity Leaders list, November 2019.

Click for a summary of the discussion, attendee list and resources discussed on the day.

If you are an employer and are interested in attending one of these workshops, please email the MCA team to register your interest.

The MCA Provider Network met for the second time in January this year. Following some discussion around priority areas of work, the Network is forming steering groups to support CITB across two key workstreams:

• developing a tool to capture training provision across the capital, and
• looking at new approaches to tutor and assessor training to fill critical gaps in the workforce.

These will help to solve two major challenges for the constructions sector in London: understanding where the gaps (and duplications) in training provision are and recruiting teams to help expand the offer across London.

Speakers presented some key issues to help push forward thinking.

Key takeaways from the session

The CSCS myth was busted: learners are not required to gain a CSCS card to enter sites when on work experience. For detail on that and other specifics (e.g. when to declare work experience to your insurers, sample project plans, etc.), see BuildUK’s work experience guide.

Getting younger learners in to workspaces can be a real challenge. Blending experience days with in-school projects (supported by employers) can be a good way of delivering value to learners while minimising pressure on staff resource.

Clearly identifying objectives for the business and learners saves a lot of time and helps keep all parties focused. Planning each step of the process, from initial engagement with a school or college, through to learner inductions and evaluation will save everyone time and money.

A brief outline of the speaker presentations is set out below.

Speaker Information

Construction Youth Trust will be launching their Contextualised Curriculum project in partnership with CITB January 2020. The project will help employers looking for a more structured approach to work experience and placements; the programme is modular and designed to flex around your business. To find out more, contact Charlotte Higgins.

CITB will be holding a workshop in January 2020 to capture views on improving work experience in the construction industry, and to capture best practice models. This learning will inform the development of a series of pilots delivered in London in partnership with workshop contributors. If you would like to be involved please contact Carl Licorish.

The London Enterprise Advisor Network (LEAN) team are available to support any employer looking to work with schools in a more structured way. To find out how they can support your business, write to Daniel Chow.

Engie UK brief mentors on how to phrase feedback to young learners to ensure it is constructive, positive and reflects reasonable expectations and next steps based on learner age and knowledge base. Learners over 18 are invited to join community projects under the supervision of volunteer Engie staff from across the business, which ensures learners have contact with professionals from a wider variety of backgrounds.

Berkeley offer both trade and professional work experience with both office and project based with access to sites for over 18s.

Thanks to our speakers:

• Carl Licorish – CITB
• Daniel Chow and Clare – London Enterprise Advisory Network
• Julian Sanz – Engie
• Naz Lewis-Humphrey and Marlene Boateng – Berkeley Group

Thanks also goes to everyone who took part in the workshop and CITB who sponsored lunch.

For more information, please email the MCA team.

Established by London First and delivered with Prospects Events, Skills London is the UK’s biggest annual jobs and careers event for 15-24 year olds and their families. This year’s event took place on 15 & 16 November 2019 at ExCeL London. The two-day event offers young people inspiration around career pathways, while enabling organisations to spark a connection with future talent.

This year, our seven Hub leads hosted stands in the Construction Village, giving young people first-hand experience of modern technology in the construction sector. This included an apprentice who gave the Mayor of London a hands-on demonstration of the digger simulator at the West London College stand!

Quotes from some of the Hub Coordinators:

Barry Mortimer, West London Hub Coordinator: “This year’s Skills London event was easily the best yet. We were overwhelmed with interest not just by the opportunity to drive an Excavator Simulator on the West London Hub stand – but by hordes of eager young people, parents, carers, teachers and others asking about the amazing career prospects offered by Construction. There was a real buzz and a super-charged atmosphere around room – not least when the Mayor visited our stand to lend his support".

Virgil Officer, CONEL Hub Coordinator: “The event was successful in provoking interest in the construction industry with the attendees. The event provided a better insight of the vast amount of jobs available in the industry and the different pathways available to get into these different roles”.

Andrew Cox, LSEC Hub Coordinator: “Seeing 1000s of learners walking around really showed us how important is for young people to build confidence, ask questions and explore a wide range of career options, aspiring them to enter into the construction industry after school”.

For more information, please email the MCA team.

Our MCA Quality Marked providers convened for the first time in October 2019 as a start of a conversation to strengthen the construction training offer in London.



As a city bursting with building sites, London is well placed to produce the broadest, most demand-responsive training offer available in construction. The network will provide a forum to share best practice, hear from employers about skills needs in the short- to medium-term, and to discuss challenges that providers across the sector face.

At our stakeholder networking event on the 29 July 2019, the Deputy Mayor for Planning, Regeneration and Skills, Jules Pipe announced the four newly awarded Mayor’s Construction Academy (MCA) Quality Mark providers: Croydon College, Dudley College of Technology, Glasgow Caledonian University and JTL Training. The event was attended by representatives of the seven Hubs as well as key industry stakeholders.

We heard from our MCA Hub leads, followed by some excellent speakers focussing on important topics for the industry including modern methods of construction, mental health and diversity in the sector.

There is a great mix of organisations now involved with the Hubs – including large employers, SMEs, FE providers, independent providers, universities, trade bodies, local authorities and employment brokerages. All these organisations share the common goal of helping Londoners to develop the skills they need to enter construction employment and tackle the city’s housing crisis.