1. What is the Growth Fund?
It is a £10m investment from the Construction Industry Training Board aimed at providing recession-hit construction employers with support in developing key skills that they need to grow. The Growth Fund is one of the ways that CITB is investing levy funds to make businesses competitive now and in the future.
2. How is it being used to help businesses?
The fund is being used to support the development and piloting of skills and training solutions for a wide range of sectors in the UK construction industry.
Projects focus on areas such as improving employers’ ability to respond to environmental sustainability and management skills challenges, improving collaborative working in the supply chain, developing industry standard training methods, creating new entrant training opportunities as well as the possibility to up-skill existing workers, and supporting businesses in accessing new markets.
3. How have they benefitted so far?
The first wave of funding for the Growth Fund was released in 2011 and since then, CITB has supported 161 projects. The fund has already delivered results across the industry and, in total, 8,000 construction organisations have benefited.
4. How have the Growth Fund initiatives been received?
Nigel Dyer, regional director at May Gurney, enrolled his team in the Supply Chain Integration Readiness Programme, one of the Growth Fund projects going on in the East of England.
Dyer said: “Innovation and efficiency are key to our collective success, especially in these challenging times. We therefore wanted to develop better, more sustainable ways of working with our current and prospective supply chain partners.
“These workshops provided the chance to make suggestions and explore how, by working better together, we can improve overall performance and create a collaborative, winning sector.”
5. How do I sign up?
Applications for the Growth Fund are invited from groups of in-scope companies, individual or multiple construction industry federations, trade bodies and training groups. These are assessed against set Growth Fund criteria agreed by the CITB Training Committee.
For the eligibility criteria, please visit www.citb.co.uk
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Still undergoing Project Management in Construction, University of Salford. Still looking further to enhance my learning and experience.