Construction Industry News Archive
Welcome to the news archive page. This is where you will find articles from August 2006. If you would like to view our current news, please click here.
- Campus looks to the future
- Building a path to employment
- Letter: Our youngsters do have apprenticeship chances
- Letter: Society is letting down its younger generation
- Staff go to Rok school
- Bognor's £100m regeneration
Campus looks to the future
Central Sussex College has been given the green light to start work on a £24 million redevelopment of its Haywards Heath campus.
A year on from the formation of the college, the Learning and Skills Council national property board has approved the college's request to help fund the major three-year scheme.
The news means contractors can now begin work on the first phase of the project at the sixth form campus.
The plans include a new 260-seat theatre space to be called The Hub, a glass atrium, a music suite and two digital language labs.
The facilities have been called "fantastic".
The scheme, split into three phases, will boost facilities at the Harlands Road campus for the performing arts, languages, English, media and fine arts. Last year's students were placed within the top one per cent of the country in performing arts. Phase One, will see a £9.3 million investment, in the performing arts centre and theatre, and the music suite, designed in collaboration with the Brighton Institute of Modern Music.
The first phase will also see two rehearsal studios built, two dance studios, two digital language labs, classrooms, IT rooms and office space.
Phase Two, which will start in November, subject to funding, will see facilities for media and arts students built.
The £4 million phase will include visual arts studios, for art, design and photography; a dark room; a digital photography suite; film and media labs; a training kitchen; and new classrooms.
Phase Three, which would cost £10.8 million and start in spring 2008, subject to funding and planning permission, would provide a hair salon; a glass atrium featuring a coffee shop; a canteen and social space; and more classrooms, labs, and IT suites.
College principal Dr Russell Strutt said: "The redevelopment of our Haywards Heath campus is part of an ongoing commitment to provide students in Mid Sussex with first class accommodation to allow them to gain first class results.
"The campus has been redesigned after close consultation with the staff and students and the end result will provide the best facilities of their kind in the area, allowing us to further expand our curriculum. It is an exciting time for our students and our staff."
From The Argus, 3rd August 2006
Building a path to employment
An intensive college course prepares students for work in construction - Chris Dyke, Guardian Education Weekly.
You don't have to travel far to find a building site. And while our dependence on builders from Poland is no urban myth, there remains a vast unfilled demand for building workers, especially in the south-east.
Colleges have traditionally been very strong on construction, but some find it hard to run such high-cost courses and respond to the ebbs and flows of the industry. Meanwhile, a lot of young people are not in training or work.
Brighton has an unemployment rate twice the regional average. "Places like Brighton tend to attract people looking for work, which they often can't find when they get here," says John Evans, the vice-principal of Brighton City College.
"There are a lot of young people who fall through the net, being too poorly qualified to go on to traditional apprenticeship schemes and not having the basic skills needed for employment." The college's Constructing Futures Project recognises the futility of training people to enter an industry if it can't offer access to jobs.
The big difficulty is that 80% of builders in the town are sole traders or partnerships, and they're hard to pin down. "We got a van and parked outside the local builders' merchants at 7am," says Evans. "A free supply of hot bacon sandwiches did the rest. We ending up talking to people we've have never had contact with in the past." The college soon had a group of employers ready to back the project.
The attributes that the builders prize most highly are punctuality and reliability. They don't expect new entrants to be highly skilled, but they do value a basic knowledge of the essential trades, such as bricklaying, plastering and plumbing. The rest can be learned at work and, for the high-flyers, there can be more advanced training later.
Regular skills tests produce a very competitive atmosphere in the group. The first cohort is a 70:30 split of 16- to 24-year-olds and older, long-term unemployed people. Much of the equipment and materials has been donated by local companies.
Steve Talmey, 23, says: " I really like the plumbing side and want to get into the design side for plumbing systems." During the course, Steve will spend two weeks with a local employer on a "try before you buy" basis. The scheme has more than 70 local companies offering placements, more than enough to give the first cohort of 25 trainees a good employment opening.
From The Guardian, 25th July 2006
Letter: Our youngsters do have apprenticeship chances
Jack Dunkerton says there appears to be a lack of apprenticeships nowadays (Argus Letters, July 19).
In fact, the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), a public sector organisation responsible for funding and planning education and training for over-16 year olds in England, offers more than 180 different apprenticeship schemes across a wide spectrum of employment sectors.
In February of this year, the council announced it was increasing the apprenticeship programme's national budget by a further three per cent.
This may not sound a lot but, in monetary terms, it meant a further £41 million allocated to an already significant commitment.
Locally, LSC Sussex plans and funds a £190 million programme for post-16 education, including apprenticeships. It works closely with organisations such as Jobcentre Plus and Connexions to provide a wealth of information for both employers and young people wishing to embark on an appropriate apprenticeship.
It also provides details of other apprenticeship training providers in Sussex, which can accessed via their web site, www.lsc.gov.uk/sussex. Two years ago, the "Constructing Futures" programme was launched in Brighton and Hove as a response to the shortage of a locally-based construction workforce.
This is a local construction skills agency, created to meet the needs of local employers for a skilled workforce by providing advice, support and training and is funded by many agencies under the guidance and management of Brighton and Hove City College.
This has been seen as an example of best practise and other local authorities and agencies are looking at how they can develop similar programmes in their areas.
In parallel with the Constructing Futures programme, the same group of agencies also deliver First Footings, which provides a pre-apprenticeship training and work experience programme to enable pupils to be ready to enter more formalised apprenticeship programmes.
Further information on Constructing Futures and First Footings is at www.constructingfutures.co.uk.
Finally, Brighton and Hove City Council's programme of apprenticeships, entitled "Earn And Learn", allows apprentices to train for a nationally-recognised qualification while receiving on-the-job training, work experience and support to improve their employability.
Further information about the apprenticeships on offer can be found be e-mailing apprenticeships@brighton-hove.gov.uk.
I trust this has gone some way to reassure Mr Dunkerton the future looks bright for vocational training and I hope his grandson is successful in finding the electrical apprenticeship he is looking for.
-Councillor Sue John - deputy leader, Brighton and Hove City Council
From The Argus, 26th July 2006
Letter: Society is letting down its younger generation
The strong thread of community which runs through all local newspapers is woven into the fabric of our society.
Our society is one of the reasons large numbers of immigrants want to settle in our midst and they bring many diverse skilled artisans among them - plumbers, carpenters, electricians and others.
But, at the moment, there is something wrong with our own training system and it is failing our young people, our school leavers.
There used to be plenty of local companies, large and small, which were able to offer the vast majority of young people who qualified an apprenticeship in their chosen field.
It is not so now.
Despite a huge proliferation of seats of learning, colleges and other training establishments, the system which used to work is gone.
Why? Because there is no concerted government funding, locally or nationally, to allow companies to employ and train their future workforces.
This has left a huge swathe of our young people in limbo, waiting for passes to a college course to be converted into an offer of "on-the-job" training with day-release as a plumber, electrician et al - but this, after all, is what a traditional apprenticeship was.
Why have politicians, colleges, employers' federations, local and national government and our ubiquitous civil service allowed the whole edifice of artisan training to collapse?
The eclectic mix of surnames in this country shows how well we have absorbed immigrants through many hundreds of years. However, in only a few years time it would appear we will have no home-grown tradespersons because our training programmes are in such a parlous state.
Who is responsible for not seeing this coming?
I have a grandson who has a promise from two colleges for a "day release" apprenticeship if he can find an employer to sponsor him.
He is but one among thousands who have left school or college with a chosen job or vocation in their sights and passes in relevant aptitude tests, then hit the brick wall of constant rejection.
That our biggest local electricity company took on only 15 apprentices last term speaks volumes in itself.
What has happened to our caring, sharing community that our future craftsmen and women are being let down so badly before they even get started? We must reverse this decline immediately.
On a personal level, the offer of an electrical apprenticeship would be greatly appreciated by my grandson.
-Jack Dunkerton, Peacehaven
From The Argus, 19th July2006
Staff go to Rok school
A construction company has opened a state-of-the-art training centre.
ROK has set itself the target of being "the best employer in the industry".
The new facility is at its administrative headquarters in Gatwick Road, Crawley.
The group, which has branches in Brighton and Eastbourne and 32 others across the UK, has dubbed the centre The School of ROK after the hit comedy film.
But the focus will be on raising standards rather than learning how to play the first chords of Stairway To Heaven.
The School of ROK mirrors the company's futuristic offices and provides a flexible space which can work as one theatre or smaller workshop areas.
The centre will offer a raft of courses including Taste of ROK, the company's three-day induction programme, and leadership and management seminars.
ROK chief executive Garvis Snook, who opened the centre, said it would be the first of many as the group continued to open branches across the UK.
ROK's people team representative Sue Flavin said: "What is so thrilling about the new school is that it offers all that and so much more. Rather than using an anonymous hotel space, we can train staff in true ROK style in the kind of environment we believe reflects us best as a business."
The first course was for 126 members of staff who wanted to improve their leadership skills.
Last year the company, whose clients include BAA and Royal & Sun Alliance, jumped 27 places to 71 in the Sunday Times's 100 Best Companies To Work For list.
ROK was formed in 1939 to carry out war work. In 2002 it bought Eastbourne-based Llewellyn for £16.25 million.
It went public in 1989 and in March this year announced record results with pre-tax profits of £16.1 million on sales of £555.8 million.
From The Argus, 18th July 2006
Bognor's £100m regeneration
Decades of decline are to be reversed with a £100 million regeneration programme.
Property developer St Modwen has been chosen to redevelop Bognor, 70 years after King George V condemned the town with his dying words: "Bugger Bognor."
The firm has already put life back into depressed town centres across Britain, drawing investment and boosting property prices.
Once planning permission is granted, construction will start at the eyesore Hothampton and Regis Centre sites.
They will be replaced with sleek new buildings including flats, offices, shopping centres, a theatre and possibly a health centre.
The town, rated the worst coastal shopping centre in West Sussex in a survey last December, will be divided into zones for leisure, shopping, offices and homes.
Planners hope as each zone becomes established it will spark growth in the others.
It is hoped people taking jobs in the offices would buy homes in the residential zone and spend money in the retail zone's shops and restaurants.
The project is expected to bring in £100 million of investment, create at least 100 jobs and better access for buses and cyclists and encourage hundreds more people to move into the town.
Members of Arun District Council, who selected St Modwen at a meeting on Wednesday evening, hope that by 2013 the town will be transformed.
Bill Oliver, chief executive at St Modwen, said Bognor had an advantage over most of the firm's redevelopment projects because it was already an attractive seaside town.
He said: "The projects we have undertaken all have one thing in common, the public and council had a vision for something better and they set out to achieve it.
"We can improve the environment people live and work in and Bognor has the added attraction of a beautiful location."
Coun Gill Brown, Arun District Council's leader, said the decision to let St Modwen carry out the project was the culmination of seven years' work.
She said: "St Modwen have very exciting ideas for the town and were happy to think outside the box and they're an established company with a lot of experience in regeneration.
"It will make a huge difference to Bognor, which has two of the worst wards for deprivation in West Sussex."
Richard McMann, the council's head of leisure and tourism, said: "This is about Bognor being put back on top.
"There is already investment coming to the town as people are seeing this starting to happen."
Bognor police chief, Insp. John Merrick said he hoped the regeneration would help improve quality of life for people in the town and instil a sense of civic pride.
From The Argus, 14th July 2006
