The opportunities are fantastic, with the average annual wage in the industry now at £42,500 – matching the banking, insurance and finance sector!
Despite that, there’s a severe skills shortage which is hitting the construction industry, at a time when Portsmouth and the Solent is home to lots of exciting new developments, including the £600 million city deal, the £100 million Dunsbury Hill Farm project and the £100 million flood defence system.
At Highbury College we have a tradition of producing a skilled workforce from our purpose-designed construction training centre at Northarbour, the largest and best-equipped in the Solent area, and we’re proud of our close links with employers.
Now we’re taking that a major step further by establishing the area’s first Centre of Excellence in Construction, Energy & Sustainable Technologies. It’s becoming even more industry-based – resulting in still greater work experience, apprenticeship and job opportunities for our students.
The college is also the lead provider for courses in Construction & the Built Environment and Construction Site Management.
Open to all (subject to interview,) we train Construction Technologists like Molly Rapson, who studied Wall & Floor tiling at our Northarbour Centre before embarking on a BTEC Level 3 in Construction & the Built Environment at our Highbury campus.
This qualification will give Molly lots of choices, making her eminently employable and also able to go on to do an HNC/HND, a CIOB Certificate in Construction Site Management or a degree. She hopes to go into quantity surveying or estimating.
The BTEC Level 3 is a part-time, work-related qualification. The HNC/HND courses are day release and the CIOB Certificate is a two-year course of evening classes.
As a result, you could find yourself working in exciting sectors of construction such as:
Salaries for technicians start at around £14,000 and can exceed £40,000 a year. *
* Figures are from the National Careers Service and intended as a guideline only
Date 13/05/2016