There are 12 modules, including construction law, project management and construction technology. In the past, each company put together its own training package, but there was no guarantee that, at the end of it, graduates would be eligible for chartered status with the CIOB.Once a graduate’s employer has put them forward for the programme and they have been accepted, it can take up to three years to complete. “This is not only because of the current skills shortage in the area, but because they see it as adding value to the industry. “Graduates without construction-related degrees can now be sponsored by an employer to train and gain chartered status within the industry,” says Sheila Hoile, director of training strategy at CITB-ConstructionSkills.This is the first year the formal programme has been run, she says. The 11 graduates on the course are employed by companies including Willmott Dixon, Laing O’Rourke and Balfour Beatty, who have supported the development of the scheme throughout.”These employers, and others, are increasingly employing graduates from a wide range of disciplines into construction jobs, such as construction management and quantity surveying,” says Hoile.

“The market is very buoyant at the moment, with a lot of high-quality and exciting construction work going on,” he explains. “There is major public- and private-funded investment in all sectors, including on-going lottery-funded projects.” Think railways, roads, airports, hospitals, bridges, offices and leisure centres, as well as high-profile projects such as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and Wembly Stadium – and you start to get the picture.Among the most popular ways in which graduates with non-construction degrees can now enter the industry is the growing number of conversion courses, such as the new CIOB (Chartered Institute of Building)/CITB-ConstructionSkills graduate diploma. “The result is a new range of ways in which non-cognate graduates can enter construction.”There are several reasons why graduates find the construction industry increasingly appealing, says Chris Cheetham, senior manager at Hays Montrose, the UK’s largest construction recruitment agency. Those within the industry have started to realise that by ignoring graduates without construction-related degrees, they have been narrowing the talent pool tremendously,” says Julian Humphreys, recruitment and careers business area manager for CITB-ConstructionSkills, the body involved in recruiting, training and qualifying people across the industry.

Those who decided to enter construction after leaving university – and numbers have risen sharply in recent years – couldn’t do so unless they were prepared to embark upon a whole new degree.
“The construction industry needs a staggering 83,000 new entrants each year. The problem has been that, until recently, graduates were required to have degrees in the relevant subject area before they were employed within the industry. Since construction is the UK’s largest industry, it’s hardly surprising that the range of graduate careers is huge. Countless schools struggle through with timetables patched up with supply teachers and teachers filling in outside their specialist area. The destabilising effect on pupils’ learning and behaviour can be immense. Unless the retention nut is cracked soon, the gains made on the recruitment front will continue to be undermined.. However, the next challenge is to try to persuade the teachers who do join to stay around for more than a few years because retention, particularly in the south east, remains a giant headache.