Construction and the Built Environment

T Levels are one of the biggest reforms to England's technical education system in a generation. Launched in September 2020, each T-level includes a substantial industry placement benefiting both the young person and the employer. Employers across England are gaining early access to new talent entering their sector. Whilst young people are gaining the skills, knowledge and attitude to excel in their careers.

Neil Conlon: We are Conlon Construction. We're a family-run business, employ between 80 to a hundred people. The reason we got involved in technical education and Manchester College was the fact that Chris Wright from the college invited Conlons to come down to the college to discuss this new course which is architecture, construction, and engineering course. Alongside Wates, Kier, Vinci, and Lovells.
Chris Wright: We like employers to get involved with us in terms of running interviews and selection process activities. And in our current model it was the employers who had the final say about who was selected to join the industry placements.
Neil: Conlons have offered industry placements because we want to make sure that we've got new people coming in at the beginning of their career into the construction industry. By giving them placements they're able to see the various different career opportunities that there are within construction.
Marsa Abraham: The thing I most enjoyed about the placement was the fact that I was able to have a great insight into all different roles. So whether it was design management, project management, quantity surveying, planning.
Paige Charlton: Prior to the industry placements I was interested in architecture, to be exact. But coming on to the course itself and seeing these placements in action, I've realised there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. It's not just going to college and attending classes. It's going out, seeing this construction world, seeing how it is in action.
Neil: The students engage. That's the kind of people that we want. People who are willing to learn, wanting to learn. We recently had Paige on our site in Gorton, and Paige was very interested in architecture. So we invited the architect down to site to spend the day with Paige.
Paige: It's never been a case of oh it's just a work experience she put on to one side of loads of files to organise.
Neil: All the staff from all the sort of collaborative group, all being superbly willing to help these young people come in to the industry. And it's work better than any of us thought it would do.
Marsa: The organisation really helped me because they went in to great detail on what was expected on me when I went to placement.
Chris: In the first six weeks of the curriculum, the vocational delivery is slightly reduced. And the health and safety aspects and the delivery of the CSCS Training is increased.
Paige: With these construction placements, it's mandatory that you have the correct full patience to get on there. So there's always been training provided by the college to help us get through those barriers. One of the biggest ones of these is the CSCS Card, you have to have that in order to access any site.
Neil: Then when they get to site, we've gone through their own individual site induction courses.
Marsa: The work that I do in placement, I kind of thought I would just be shadowing. I was like showed how to do takeoffs for like you know the back garden and tiles in the bathroom.
Neil: Construction as a whole has got a fairly negative image. And we are doing our absolute best to improve that. And we really need to promote women into construction more. The end of the day, there are 50% of the population we're saying we got a skills gap, we need women into the construction industry. And having a 45-day placement is going to help a whole lot.
Paige: I met with the design manager and she was really lovely. It was actually really reassuring to see that she was a woman. You don't see women in construction sites everyday. And for me to see her as an aspiring construction worker, was just really motivating.
Neil: From our own skills leads, we see the current industry placements that we're involved with. As an excellent sort of introduction into the industry.
Marsa: It kind of gave me a quite a good understanding of which sector I wanted to go into which is quantity surveying.
Paul Woby: I would say to another employer, get on board. It's been great for us as a company to get involved with the college. And we've had some great fresh new ideas from the students. It will become the norm and it's going to be really good for the industry.
Neil: We haven't seen a negative side to it at all. But very few hiccups and there's a lot of benefits that coming out of it.
Lisa O'Loughlin: What our employers actually tell us is they really get the chance to get to know a young person, they get to trial them. They can see a more diverse skill set. And actually at the end of the day, they very often want to take them as a full time employee.