Mace’s ‘Building Futures’ programme

One of the problems that exists when talking to young people about careers in construction is the lack of understanding about the variety of different roles available.

Both teachers and school children are unaware of the scope with a career in construction and can limit the options of students because of preconceptions about who would be suitable to work in construction.

We chose to tackle the issue by creating an educational programme called Building Futures that would expose young people to job roles at every stage of construction.

We based the programme on the RIBA stages of work and included interactive tasks in an hourly after-school session with two girls’ schools. The students worked in groups of 4-5 and completed a stage of constructing their own community café, each week. This meant that everything from feasibility studies, to interior design was covered and the girls were given a flavour of the careers involved at each stage.

The programme was started and finished with an exciting trip to Mace’s head office, with talks from Directors about construction careers. Each of the twelve weeks featured a volunteer from Mace, our client or our subcontractors who spoke about their career, bringing the programme to life.

The students completed the programme with an award ceremony where they displayed their work to Mace colleagues at the head office and received goody bags and certificates.