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Construction Youth Trust will test and develop effective pathways into construction for harder-to-reach young people and create a comprehensive best practice toolkit that will provide employers, particularly SMEs and supply-chain companies, with proven methods of engaging, recruiting and retaining two of the priority groups: 

• young people not in education, training or work (NEET) or identified by the authorities as being at significant risk of becoming NEET,
• full-time learners currently studying construction and built environment diplomas.

Through a project that will research, develop and test new and existing approaches and pathways (e.g. engagement activities, work-readiness programmes, resources, coaching frameworks, support networks), we will support employers of all sizes, with a focus on supply-chain employers, to connect with NEET young people and full-time FE learners.

As well as prioritising young people who have historically been under-represented in the industry (i.e. people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnicity (BAME) backgrounds and young women), we also want to reach young people who do not currently view employment in the construction industry favourably, and help them to realise the varied opportunities and entry routes available to them.

LBC will adopt a coordinated approach to up-scaling its existing services and extend the offering of this for a construction sector specific pathway to engage more women and long term unemployed into the Croydon construction sector.

It adopts a regional approach to extend its services and will also support construction employers to get better at recruiting from these hard to reach talent pools.

This project will support infrastructure suppliers to be ready for Project 13, a fundamental change in how the sector’s clients deliver high performing infrastructure.

Project 13 was launched in May 2018. It seeks to develop a new business model – based on an enterprise, not on traditional transactional arrangements – to boost certainty and productivity in delivery, improve whole life outcomes in operation and support a more sustainable, innovative, highly skilled industry.

A major challenge for the roll out of Project 13 will be training and development of the workforce to deliver improved productivity. As Project 13 is a new initiative, there is no existing training provision.

The group’s proposal is to develop and deliver a Boosting Infrastructure Productivity syllabus focusing on Project 13, with a sustainable model that can continue after the funded period.

Developed in partnership with key contractors, who are all SMEs, the Breakfast Club will deliver eight bespoke interactive training and personal development sessions for 48 new industry entrants (4 cohorts of 12) over a 15-month period. 

Running concurrently as a controlled programme alongside the regular intake of new employees, the project will deliver evidence-based comparisons as to the benefit of the bespoke additional interventions for the retention of new entrants.

This contextualised curriculum project will consist of the development of a suite of resources, available online, for the use of teachers, careers advisers and industry ambassadors that raise the profile and desirability of careers in construction and the built environment.

The project will also include the piloting and roll out of these resources in schools.