Building projects in rural areas- where do the tradesmen sleep?

[Meadowbreeze]

Excuse my ignorance. Have never lived outside a huge city and this thought is really annoying me. I've been watching grand designs and I've just had this thought, where do all the workers on these random, middle of nowhere locations stay? They can't all be local. The local town or village will only have so many tradesmen all available at once, with the knowhow of building this strange design.
I guess the same goes for drastic building work in small towns and villages. Do you contact a local architect and they source all the manpower?
Do they all sleep in local hotels? Caravans? How does it work?
Or am I just being blind to the obvious surplus of tradesmen in rural areas.

Always have to wait for someone todo the work. Plumbers are the worst

I live very rurally, think an island with less than a 1000 people. There are at least 6 different building companies on the island, they have the skills and tradespeople to pull off award winning houses as well as large commercial sheds. Sometimes they will get people in to help, they stay in caravans or local B&B's/Hotels. They just need to either be organised and book well ahead or undertake work in the off season.

I think its harder for trades working in Central London. No parking so all having to come in on public transport.

I once spent a week in a Premier Inn (long story) and there were quite a few trades vans in the car park. Never saw any of them though, they must have all had an earlier breakfast than me!

Not quite building, but I've done landscaping for building sites in rural areas, and:

• we just drive there; we charge the project accordingly.
• no, I'm not a tradesman and I wouldn't like to be called one. IME people expect to be referred to according to what they do. If you're a brickie or a roofer that's what you are. It would be odd for someone to walk up and say 'hi, I'm a tradesman, where do I start'. The answer would be 'erm, yes, so are all of us ... what job are you here to do?!'

Sometimes they have site accommodation, made out of containers.

Friend of mine her son is a specialist trade and they’re often up in a minibus, leaving at 5am to drive three hours for a job. Their last three hour drive was to Birmingham so not particularly rural.

@SarahAndQuack I agree with you. I have only ever used tradesmen as a word encompassing most physical labour workers on a work site, not a specific person, hence using it in the title. I know building sites require lots of different trades which is what got me thinking, how do they find them all. For example I wouldn't say I have tradesmen in today. But when talking about lack of availability in skilled trades, the word might come up. The women I worked with in the charity used the word rarely too but that's just because, as you say, it doesn't come up.
In my head it's not really a gendered word tbh, it just describes a person doing a type of work. Although I appreciate its not being used on me, but by me.

@Talkwhilstyouwalk It is still very rare to see women in trades, and ones that are in it are often asked really inappropriate questions about their sexuality, the assumption being they're butch lesbians, which puts a lot of girls off from doing it. It is worse on sites than in self employed so the ones I worked with would train on apprenticeships with big companies, and than go onto set up their own companies, unless they specialised in something like steel framing- which there's a huge shortage of people for if you fancy a career change.
There are brilliant charities out there doing lots to change attitudes around this. Many girls would make amazing tradies as they're often more diligent than the boys, and pay attention to detail.

Re tradesman/tradesperson, 'operative' avoids this.

@CourtneeLuv really? How would you use that in a sentence? I think I'd just get confused.

"Have you contacted all the operatives to get their labour returns"

"Tell all the operatives that the inductions are only on Mondays at 8am"

"The canteen is open to all operatives between 6am and 6pm"

Where I used to live I backed on to a field and at the other end of the field was a steep embankment and a railway line. There was a bridge not far away which needed work on it and they used the field as their base. They put in twopence Demountables the size of shipping containers, one on top of the other and workmen stayed in them. There were also portaloos.

Hotels, usually premier inns travelogue holiday inn express

It does depend on the nature of the work and how skilled the craftsman or craftswoman is.

If work is of a recurring sort, jobbing builder, then those workers are local. This can be a radius of 50 miles or so though as well as living in the next village. However some near neighbours had a thatcher and his mate stopping overnight in a local pub from Monday to Thursday until the work was done. They travelled 150 miles from East Anglia so going home would not be an option.

When I commuted into London, many construction workers would catch the earliest high speed train, some with a specialist piece of kit which they managed to store under the seat or on the overhead rack.

So while most will be local, some specialists will commute.

Even the most 'strange' design will be mainly built with the usual trades, groundwork, steel erection, brickies, roofers etc. As PP have pointed out, there will usually be local people who can cover the vast majority of work. Specialists can be called in for particular jobs and they will probably stay overnight monday-thursday at the nearest, cheapest hotel/B&B.

With large scale infrastructure projects a different approach is required.

Normally in remote places, such as Hinckley Point and the HS2 tunnelling work, there is insufficient local housing to provider anywhere near the level of accommodation required. The Hinckley Point expansion is a mini town in itself, with at least 15 accommodation blocks, hospital, shops, teaching facilities, restaurants and bus links.

Hinckley Point accommodation

I recall when the Channel Tunnel was being constructed, some rest accommodation was dragged behind the main boring machine. That is not the case with HS2 though.

I'm far less sure based than I used be, but I just used to stay in b&bs etc. I would always book in my full name. Once or twice I was shown to a bunk room full of blokes, but always actually ended up in a room of my own. Never had a problem finding somewhere within an hour of even the most remote place. Everywhere has accommodation for walking holidays!

I don’t live rurally but we have had some large infrastructure projects in the last 10 years. There was a B&B near me that ended up specialising in hosting tradesmen/women. Cheap basic offering, lots of microwaves and ready meals available, near a pub etc. The main projects are done now and the B&B shut down as no one wanted to stay there for leisure.

I live in Bristol and when we had our windows done the guys (father and son) drove over from Swansea everyday. Two hours with that wind behind you at best. They didn't mind.

They travel to the site, most will be fairly local - 45 mins drive can get you quite far in a rural area remember! Specialists brought in my stay in a b&b or have a camper van if they regularly are on site away from home

I remember when our very rural village church needed a specialist to work on the 11th century woodwork he did a week each with 6 families around the village. Such a lovely man.

@Trumpton this is exactly how I imagined rural tradies working lol as lovely as it is, I now know it's not common.

@Vigneau that's incredible!

Hi.
I have a little Airbnb and quite often have trades people staying. They often prefer a homely house rather than a hotel. They're always my best guests. Normally they're in teams and just chip in together.

Do all the Hinckley Point accommodation occupiers look like this? 😁

Not far off!