We currently have two educational partnerships in Essex: South Essex College and Chelmsford College.
We support these colleges/schools with a minimum of three activities a year, from activities that they deliver themselves to ones that we can take on. We also ringfence work experience and/or industrial placement opportunities for their construction students.
Each year we offer both colleges the opportunity for their Year 1 T-Level students to join our VWEx programme (virtual work experience) for colleges week in December. We then choose a minimum of one student to move on to industrial placements.
These placements support the students with a further 280 hours of meaningful work experience where they do a mini-rotation across the various departments in the business – planning, estimating, quantity surveying, site management, social value – to aid their development and knowledge of the industry.
Last year, two of these students moved through into industrial placements on our Eversley Leisure Centre and Broomfield Hospital projects, and one has gone on to secure a degree-level apprenticeship with us starting in September 2024.
They will be joining a further two other apprentices who have joined us in the last three years from South Essex College and Chelmsford College as a result of our partnership with them. And we are currently in the process of recruiting from last December’s cohort.
Three Winning Facts:
- Virtual work experience placements for 67 students in 2023
- 580 hours of industrial placement (two students) in 2023
- We engaged with 464 young people in 2023 about entry routes into construction careers
