Huge thank you to everyone on our team who pulled together to make our first ever Apprentice Skills Day such a success on Saturday.

After a fantastic response and a really difficult selection process we invited three groups totalling 30 potential apprentices to our yard to try out their future trade.

To welcome each group, James Brown MCIOB MAPM, our Contracts Manager, delivered a presentation where he described what life in construction would be like and what would be expected of apprentices during their apprenticeship and beyond. As James explained, bricklaying and joinery are extremely skilled jobs which take years to master, involving maths and visual/creative skills, precision, physical stamina and a can-do attitude, but once you have learned a trade it’s yours for life and it’s a great industry for the right person.

After a Site Safety Briefing and a quick quiz, everyone put on their PPE and went out to our yard ready to try out their chosen trade.

Ged and our recent Bricklaying Apprentice graduate Matty did an excellent job showing the future brickies how to lay a wall in both bricks and blocks. Ged has been bricklaying with us 50 years this year so is possibly the most experienced bricklayer in the North East – there is no better person to show our future apprentices the ropes.

In our Joiner’s Workshop, our Foreman Joiner Colin and Joinery Apprentice Tanis demonstrated how a roof truss is put together and showed our future joiners how to measure the angles, using saws, clamps and machinery to cut the joints in and assemble the trusses.

Ged and Colin were both really impressed with the attitude and readiness to learn displayed by our apprentice hopefuls and it is going to be a difficult task deciding who to take on to the next step – a week of work experience this summer, with the best of those being offered an apprenticeship starting in September.

Many thanks to everyone including New College Durham and Gateshead College who shared our posts and especially to all those who made the effort to apply and come along.