Now celebrating its 10^th year, the construction industry’s most successful course at integrating women and those from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds, needs funding to expand.

The Construkt programme was created, and is run by social enterprise Serious About Youth (SAY), and has a 70 per cent success rate at launching participants into successful building careers. Construkt is aimed at those with Black, Asian and minority (BAME) backgrounds, young people not in education, employment or training (NEETS), and women. In ten years, more than 350 young people have found construction jobs as a result of the course.

Recently, Wates Group has been the main funding provider, but the founders of the project are appealing to more construction companies to help them scale up the programme.

‘We’ve established Construkt as a successful training model that’s achieved a lot in the last ten years, but with further support from the construction industry we can do so much more to help young people onto positive paths that don’t just help individuals themselves, but those around them, the communities in which they live, and the companies that employ them,‘ says Serious About Youth Co-founder and Director, Rommell Wallace.

‘At the moment, we are running two or three courses a year, but the reality is this could be four or more, and for this we need more course partners.’

Construkt takes participants through design principles and RIBA stages; Building Information Modelling (BIM); the bidding process and tender presentations; the employability skills needed to gain employment, and culminates in course members building a large scale timber structure based on a live construction project.

The course also teaches course participants the life cycle of construction projects, and allows them to gain exposure to the different career pathways available. Construkt is designed to give participants the confidence, knowledge, skills and ambition to work in the construction sector, and prepares individuals in how to work collaboratively in a positive team environment.

A key part the Construkt programme additionally involves preparation for what comes after the course, including writing a CV, professional social skills and interview skills, plus finding a job is made easier due to representatives of construction companies attending an end of course celebration evening.

Rommell Wallace can be contacted by email at rommell@say-youth.org