CASS is a scaffolding and access solutions company based in Barry, South Wales. We as a company faced the challenges of COVID as did others, but we were able to grow the workforce by employing six young men on the CITB Apprenticeship programme. We understood the need to offer the youngsters in the borough the opportunity of gaining a career and wanted to be able to offer this during the uncertain times that COVID brought. We worked closely with two major blue-chip companies (Morgan Sindall and Bouygues) to establish a partnership for these youngsters and with the assistance from the CITB placed one apprentice permanently with these two clients on their relevant sites.
It was important to us to ensure that we targeted youngsters that came from under privileged backgrounds whereby they may not have had the chance to gain access to the apprenticeship programme. CASS had previously employed three apprentices in 2017 and all three successfully qualified as scaffolders are now working with the gangs on sites throughout the UK.
CASS recognised that there is a labour shortage within the construction industry especially from a scaffolding point of view and the lack of training centres was proving to be difficult to offer these programmes. We worked closely with the CITB and built a good working relationship with the new training centre in Swansea which opened during COVID and allowed us to plough forward with employing these six new trainees. The six young men have started their training and are working with various gangs on many different projects and they are supported by us as a management team along with the support from the CITB.
We believe that achieving this during one of the hardest times for the UK and worldwide has shown our commitment to not only offering employment to the youngsters in the Vale of Glamorgan but also shows our clients that we want to grow the workforce from within CASS. We encourage every person and at every level to step up through the ranks and we currently have an Operations Director who started with CASS as a scaffolder. The opportunities we offer are important to us.
Scaffolding can be a hard career, but it can also be very rewarding. Yes, the operatives must work in all weather throughout the year but the opportunities to travel the world are available and to work in some of the biggest cities is incredible. We want to give these chances to the young people who do not always fit on an academic path, but this can be gained through experience and we want to help.
