Would you encourage your child to train to be a construction worker?

[rickyrickygrimes]

Just listening to a podcast about the lack of construction workers in the uk being a major issue in the (lack of) housing crisis. The Federation of Master Builders reckon they need at least 250,000 new construction workers by 2028 to have even the slightest hope of meeting government targets (and to plug the huge gap caused by Brexit) but the government has only provided funding to support the training of 60,000 new builders.

anyone out there got a child who’s training in this kind of job? Or a DH who’s further down the line? Has it been a good career for him? Anyone teaching or training young people for these kinds of roles?

I don’t know anyone who is encouraging their child to take on this kind of skilled manual worker role. My nephew had previously said he didn’t want go to uni and wanted to be an electrician, but he’s recently changed his mind and wants to study business of some sort. My own 14 yr old has expressed an interest in construction / project management. He’s clever, more than capable of uni, so I’ll be encouraging him down the academic route. I guess I’m wondering where these 250,000 people at going to come from, to train for what has to be a pretty hard physical job.

I'd have loved DS to be in some sort of trade... they're always in demand and if they're any good they can make a very decent living out of it. But...sadly he's incredibly academic and utterly useless with anything more complex than a can opener, so that definitely won't be happening

I worked in construction but I am afraid I'm not a husband or father or son, what with being female.

I loved it, but it is hard work and I left due to the relentless sexist behaviour and the lack of opportunities for women to get higher up the ladder.

I then went into the construction training side, which I did until I took early retirement in my 50s.

I was involved with the most successful construction training programme the industry ever had, and I could write for days on the issues within the industry that makes it harder to train people in this area than other areas. From the insurance issues, to the lack of work life balance, to the exhaustion paired with long working days in the summer, to the travel, to the best time to work and train being the time at which families go on holiday and trainers themselves are off for 6-8 weeks, to the matching of people to individual skills, to the H&S restrictions and the H&S risks, to the issues of working in all weathers, most of it bad, to the effect it has on the body, to the lack of knowledge of where the skills gaps are, and to the fact that the training industry itself laid off so many actual experts who were designing and running the training programmes who decided to take early retirement and tell the people now desperate for the skills to run and implement effective training straetgies that they should have thought of that before making them all redundant or treating them like shit in the first place.

And that's not including the sheer volume of fraudulent activity in the training world, that doesn't audit training properly and ends up having providers 'producing' good outcomes for people that only went on a day's session and had their data harvested for 'outcomes', that were officially reported to the DfE and the London Mayor's Police with evidence including an external forensic audit of the fraud, who still appear as providers and are still given contracts. Whilst the decent trainers who produced actual outcomes were too slow and didn't have a good enough pass rate because they were not fraudsters were binned off. Go figure as they say.

Such a flawed industry, rife with issues but if you can get a good company who teaches you properly on the job, takes you seriously and you have the guts and the stomach for working in it, and don't mind hard work, then go for it.

I think it’s a pretty nuanced question. My brother tried a joinery apprenticeship but could only get work on identikit, new build houses at the lowest quality end of the business. He hated it. Building hundreds and hundreds of identical interior doorframes. He felt he learned little and was just cheap production line labour. (He quit and became a chef).
But I can imagine there are other companies out there who would be great at apprentice training and give a good variety of experience and knowledge.

My son is a second year electrician apprentice. He started straight after GCSE’s and after a steep learning curve is bedding in and enjoying it. He was done with education in its academic sense and so college was not for him.

His uncle is an electrician so was able to support his applications for an apprenticeship. It works for him and longer term he would like to go in to property management! His friendship group is full of plumbing, building and carpentary apprentices - so a full construction team in the future!

He definitely works with older electricians who may work part time or leave some of the more practical elements (climbing in to lofts!) to the young un’s and that works well as they have the knowledge to teach the skills in exchange.

It has worked well for my son and his friends - I could not have managed dragging him kicking and screaming through further education like his GCSE’s 😭!

Absolutely! I wish I'd been encouraged (as a girl) to consider a trade instead of university. High pay, flexible working, and the health benefits of daily strength training (lifting radiators as a plumber/hauling bricks or slate as a builder or roofer) rather than being sedentary at my laptop.

I'm a civil engineer. My best site managers started in trades, or as plant operators, and moved into management roles later (site management, construction management, cost management) often via day release, evening classes or time out for a sponsored degree.

I tell any school leavers wanting to go into construction to look at Cost Management aka Quantity Surveying - those guys seem to be the best paid in the industry, and it's a great mix of site and office work.

I'm someone who turns up on site for an hour in a new car (albeit, it's a Skoda) talks, and leaves. You're not paying me for the hour, you're paying me for the years of study, experience and qualification to be able to solve the problem in an hour.

If your DC aren't overly academic and don't like being stuck at a desk go for it. Wages can be excellent and long term, self employment can give a good work-life balance. Uk is desperately short of construction workers. Down side is getting older if they are still hands on after 50ish.

I have a 50 yo relative planning to leave his office job to set up as a handyman/builder. He's obviously crazy to be taking up a life of manual labour at his age.
However he's also encouraging his children into the trades. Good money, rewarding physical labour, and a serious shortage so there are plenty of jobs to be had. As long as they are also planning for the future, it's a solid alternative for many kids.

I’m doing some freelance work for the CITB (Construction Industry Training Board) at the moment, creating workshops for schoolchildren to encourage them into the construction industry.

This website is great and has loads of info about every kind of construction job you can think of.
https://www.goconstruct.org/construction-careers

Yes I would. I work as a civil engineering designer so I see a lot of the construction industry. There are far more roles in construction than just plumbers and bricklayers, just like not everyone in the military is a soldier. It is not all heavy work or outdoors and much of it is skilled. For example machine/crane drivers, testing and calibration technicians, scaffolders, surveyors, working in manufacturing components, heritage restoration, ground investigations: there are just hundreds of job types. It's not all visible to the public so unless someone has a family member in the industry they may have no idea.

There are jobs at all skill levels and opportunities for progression and gaining more qualifications. The teamwork and sense of achievement is really motivating, when it goes well.

There is always going to be construction in the future from new railways down to a few house refurbishments. Schools should be targeting these careers for boys and girls.

It can be challenging physically, but there is much more attention to welfare, handling and lifting these days than in the past and large companies have to comply with this. You can equally have physical/mental health problems working in healthcare, sitting on your backside in an office or in a miserable call centre job.

The British construction industry is being propped up by immigrant workers, many from Europe, I don't see why their young people are different to ours except that the jobs and skills are maybe more respected in other countries.

Unfortunately despite many toy diggers and Lego, one of my DS wants to work in the music industry and the other in e-sports!

Tradespeople are some of the best paid in the market just now and in high demand, I definitely would (in our area certainly & sounds like it’s the same elsewhere). As for future career, DH is very senior in construction & many of his colleagues of a similar level are joiners etc who moved into contract manager or similar roles and are very well paid in roles better suited to their ages now (not that you can’t be a joiner in your 40s/50s but many find a less physical role more suitable as they age). There’s also decent money in site management which is a natural progression for many trades.

DH is an electrician, currently earning about 75k which is more than me as a nurse. He is now taking on large contracts with big name new home builders so income is climbing, although I have to spend some hours each week now assisting with accounts, admin etc. He is getting more and more time now to be 'off the tools', which I think is more secure for the future.

Like anything, it's what you make of it and how you scale it.

Do you know if there's an equivalent in Scotland? We've found it impossible to find an apprenticeship for DS - even the college courses require you to have your apprenticeship before you start, whereas we naively thought (having no experience whatsoever of trades) that the college would provide the students to companies looking for apprenticeships.

Son has done his apprenticeship as a painter and decorator and is now employed by the company who trained him. He enjoys it and earns well.

I know he's very young but I can see my 6yo working in and eventually taking over Dhs construction business. He's very interested and when playing in the garden, he's rather get a spade and dig than play football.

I would encourage him though to go to uni and get some kind of qualification behind him. Even his preschool at the age of 4 said he builds structures way beyond his peers and that they can see him being an architect.

I also have an 11yo who is likely to follow me into a desk job.

I was urged to go to uni, that way lay the promised land! All i have to show for it is debt -_- these days I think unless you want to be a doctor, lawyer etc avoid the debt and be a tradie. Always in demand, bezos/AI can't nick it.

No, my DH is 45 and has worked in construction since he was a teen, he now had a degenerative spinal problem and hearing loss, work is becoming unmanageable and it’s a frightening place to be at his age. We assumed he’d have years left, there’s big money to be made but only when you are very fit.

Really sorry to hear that and sympathies. My husband also has a degenerative spinal condition, it’s awful, isn’t it.

CITB covers all 4 home nations.
https://www.citb.co.uk/about-citb/what-we-do/citb-in-your-local-area/scotland/

The CITB run an apprenticeshop department in Scotland, there is a team dedicated to just that.

https://www.citb.co.uk/courses-and-qualifications/citb-apprenticeships/become-a-citb-apprentice/apply-for-a-citb-apprenticeship/

CITB covers all 4 home nations.

No, they cover England, Scotland and Wales. CITB NI is a separate organisation.

By construction, I’m assuming electricians, plumbers, other specialists? I would encourage some people to go into trades, yes. There’s a major lack of carpenters in my area, seems to be a disappearing skill. Some teens just don’t want to be in formal education and want to go on to do apprenticeships. Learning a trade while being paid is great for some youngsters and looking at what they charge once qualified, I’d say go for it!

Quite a few of my form-Year 11-have no concrete plan for their career, quite normal for a lot of kids their age. I’ve had them on various sites looking at all options, A levels, college, apprenticeships at varying levels. Navy cadets is great, for example, my form member will be learning a trade, being paid to do further qualifications and the base grades needed aren’t very high.

Some are going to do A levels because they don’t have much of an idea and are seeing it as a delay in having to choose, although some are choosing this route very deliberately, of course.

I'd you learn a trade, you have a job for life. No need to worry about unemployment or having a toxic boss.

You will be first in the queue for visas making it easy to live abroad if that's what you want.

What's not to like!

An old colleague of mine got a job in the industry because he fancied a change for working as an electrician, after a few years he just quit, went back to his tools, no drama. How cool is that, to just quit without any consequences.

DD is 25 and a fully qualified civil engineer working in infrastructure (roads, rail etc.). DH works in health and safety and used to train people how to operate plant machinery and cranes. There is always work in these fields.

I'll encourage dd to do whatever she feels will make her the happiest.

100% this.