A pioneering construction training course developed in Croydon has been adapted for use with HS2 contractors at Old Oak Common.
Station of opportunity: the Old Oak Common construction site, where 20 youngsters looking to work in the building industry go hands-on experience
The Construkt course, run by Croydon-based social enterprise Serious About Youth, has been given an HS2 variation in conjunction with Expanded/Laing O’Rourke and the BBVS Joint Venture – Balfour Beatty, Vinci and Systra – which is working on £1.7billion project in west London, one of the largest engineering projects currently being undertaken in Britain.
Construkt was devised as a response to Croydon’s social inequalities and high crime rates, and creates careers in construction and engineering for women and those with BAME backgrounds at a time when there is a skills shortage in the British construction sector.
In a week-long exercise held before Christmas, around 20 youngsters from sixth forms and colleges benefited from on-site training and other facilities being used by contractors at the development of the Old Oak Common “super-hub” station.
Old Oak Common is part of the highly controversial HS2, Britain’s new high-speed railway. The station at Old Oak Common will be an intersection for high-speed trains from London to the Midlands, north-west England and Scotland, as well as providing access to the Elizabeth Line, Heathrow Express and GWR services.
With its 14 platforms, including six for the high-speed train services, Old Oak Common is the biggest newly built station to be constructed in this country since Victorian times.
During their week on-site, the Construkt students were given presentations by experienced managers on design, civil and mechanical engineering.
Rare opportunity: some of the Construkt group that spent a valuable week learning at Old Oak Common
The course finished with a networking event in which participants were able to discuss career opportunities with representatives from HS2 contactors, as well as those from Wates, Mulalley, McConnell Construction, Stantec, Glenman, SRL acoustics and McLaren Group.
Of the course’s participants, six were women and 80% were BAME.
“The fantastic support and involvement of the contractors at Old Oak Common enabled us to produce a highly engaging and educational variant of Construkt,” according to Rommell Wallace, the Serious About Youth co-founder.
“Like all our courses, it will be the catalyst for another group of young people entering the construction industry, but we cannot do it without the support from the sector itself.”
Construkt’s training modules do really work: one of the people working at Old Oak Common for Balfour Beatty had undertaken a Construkt course the previous year. The course usually sees 70% of participants go on to find roles in the building industry.
The standard Construkt course takes participants through design principles and RIBA stages; Building Information Modelling; the bidding process and tender presentations; the employability skills needed to gain employment, and culminates in course members building a large-scale timber structure based on a live construction project. Additionally, the course prepares its participants to find a job, writing a CV, professional social skills and interview skills, as well as providing job networking opportunities.
Serious About Youth is constantly seeking contractors to become partners for the Construkt programme, which is reliant on cooperation from construction companies.
- It has also launched a Crowdfunding campaign to enable building companies to contribute directly to financially support training courses and enable mentoring and work experience opportunities for those that have completed courses. More information on the Crowdfunding can be found via this link https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/say-construkt
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
For more information, visit www.say-youth.org
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Sounds like a fantastic initiative – win, win, win! But excuse my ignorance, why can’t the construction industry firms pay for training? I think this initiative is a good idea and one I want to support, but not sure I understand why the industry requires crowd funding. The young people here are the solution, not the problem.