How do you feel the apprenticeship has prepared you for a career in the industry?
It gives you a good foundation of work. It shows you exactly what technical skills you need. Doing the apprenticeship work while you’re employed gives you a good understanding of what goes into each role. Having real-world opportunities while you’re learning gives you a better understanding of what you’re actually trying to achieve from it all and how you can use those skills in the workplace.
What are your future career ambitions?
In the short term, I’d like to run a phase of the site I’m currently on, then become the site manager of the phase myself so that I can then have a better understanding of how the overall project works. Then using what I’ve learnt to have the responsibility of running further sites. I’d like to be able to keep progressing, keep taking on new roles, new responsibilities and being able to have more of an input into how the company functions.
How do you think we can make the construction industry inclusive for all employees?
By having everybody included in different projects. Whether you’re an apprentice or you’re new to a role or you’ve been in there a long time, people from different backgrounds always benefit the industry because everybody’s had a different experience in life. Just because someone’s new to a position doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve got no experience. Collaborating with everyone gives a better outcome.
What would be your dream project to work on in the future?
So my dream project would be a large site where there are lots of different things going on. These days sustainability is quite high on the list, so having all the new technologies coming into a project and making sure houses are somewhere people would like to live and that they’ve got nice, clean, open spaces are vital. Having a whole oversight on that sort of project would be great.
