Every downturn cuts training. Students will test it.

This issue is mostly about one conversation, with a university that is about to put two groups of business students and an economics class to work on a question this industry has argued about for twenty years: why young people do not choose construction, and why the ones who do so often leave.

This week's question: what first brought you into construction?

• Family or a friend already in it
• School, college or a careers adviser
• Work experience or a summer job on site
• I fell into it by accident

Vote on this week's question

Vote with one tap, and read my take on Friday: community.lechley.com/question

From my desk

On Thursday I caught up with the academic who runs live-client projects at a university management school here in the North West. Term has just started and there are nearly a hundred student projects kicking off at once. Two of them are mine.

Two groups of final-year business students will spend this academic year on a brief I have set: what young people actually want from an employer, and how they want to hear about it. Not what the industry assumes they want, which is how most early careers material gets written. The first briefing is in early November, proposals follow, and the main work runs from January to March.

Then an extra I did not expect. A new second-year economics module asks students to test a live client's hypothesis against public data and say plainly whether the numbers confirm or deny it. Mine is the one I wrote about this week: every downturn cuts training, and the bill lands about a decade later. If the data says I am wrong, I will tell you that too.

Meanwhile, this week put a number on something I have been watching build for a while. Five major UK frameworks, worth more than £15bn between them, all landed with named contractors in the same week, from Oxford's £1.6bn Inspire framework to Sellafield's £3.6bn nuclear deal. Results from firms like William Hare and Gilbert-Ash showed profit rising while turnover fell, the clearest sign yet that this market rewards scale and margin over sheer volume. If you are weighing your next move, the firms worth approaching directly are the ones making news for profit, not size. Full breakdown: Scale is winning, on site and on the books.

What the students will test

Here is the brief, because several of you will have a view on it, and some of you can help.

• Group one designs and runs a survey of 18 to 25-year-olds: what they want from an employer, and where they actually look for it.
• Group two takes the other side: how that information should be put in front of them, and what puts them off before they have looked properly.
• Two further strands sit alongside: why experienced people leave, often in their fifties and often because their body has had enough, and the Exchange, putting the students' answers in front of people with thirty-five years in, and the other way round.
• The economics class gets three to five questions on public data. Do training intakes fall faster than employment in a downturn? Can you see 2008, COVID and the 2022 cost shock in the age profile today? Which trades show the deepest gaps: roofers, scaffolders, site managers? And which shortfall figure should anyone believe? The CITB says 206,000 extra workers between 2026 and 2030; other figures in circulation run far higher.

Whatever they find, I will publish it here, with the students named if they want to be. The final presentation will be open to people from industry and local government, not just to me.

If you run an emerging talent or early careers team and could give these students half an hour between January and March, reply to this email. The same goes if you know a public data set that would help.

The week in construction

• Sellafield has named the partners for its Project and Asset Care Execution framework, worth up to £3.6bn. OneAxIoM, the Amentum and Mitie joint venture, takes the £2.1bn first lot; Hochtief takes the £1.5bn second lot for decommissioning and specialist facilities. It runs nine years with an option on six more, potentially to 2041. This is asset care and decommissioning, not new build, so it gives nuclear project controls and commercial people in Cumbria a fifteen-year pipeline whatever happens at Sizewell C. Source: Lechley Community, from New Civil Engineer, 7 Oct
• Arcadis will cut 1,000 roles worldwide and sell most of its architecture business, a week after WSP walked away from its takeover bid. It says it will keep hiring in transport, energy and water, already 53% of net revenue, and that no UK architecture jobs are at risk. A failed takeover rarely means the status quo holds. If you are inside a diversified consultancy, follow the growth capital, not the headcount. Source: Lechley Community, from Building, 8 Oct
• Six Greenwich council housing schemes have stopped after Helix Construct ceased trading, with more than 40 staff affected. The Newbury firm turned over £39.5m in eighteen months and slipped to a loss of just over £180,000. Before joining a contractor in the £30m to £50m bracket that leans on public sector housing, ask how concentrated the client base is and which way margins have been going. Source: Lechley Community, from Construction News, 9 Oct
• Wates has full planning consent for Poets Corner, the 530-home first phase of its £360m Harrow civic centre regeneration. The Section 106 agreement locks in 35 apprenticeships, 63 work experience placements and 210 local labour roles. Planning conditions are now doing some of the industry's recruiting for it. Those placements are the front door this week's students will be asking about. Source: Lechley Community, from Building and Construction Enquirer, 7 Oct

People on the move

• Catherine Raynsford, Group Partnerships Director at Vistry from 1 January 2027 (from Legal & General Affordable Homes), succeeding Stephen Teagle, who retires at the end of March. More
• Stuart Hosegood, Safety, Health and Environment Director at Willmott Dixon.

New on the community

• The year we didn't hire anyone (Thoughts)
• Every downturn cuts training. The bill lands a decade later (Insights)
• Vistry hands partnerships top job to L&G's Raynsford (News)

All of it free at community.lechley.com.

One useful thing

If you run an apprentice or graduate intake, decide now what happens to the people you turn down. Most big schemes take a small fraction of those who apply, and the rest hear nothing. A short note pointing them to your supply chain partners, or a guaranteed interview next year, costs almost nothing and keeps people who have already said they want to join this industry from walking away from it.

What I'm working on

Bovis is appointing two Construction Managers on Manchester Town Hall, the restoration of Alfred Waterhouse's Grade I listed building. Senior site manager level, reporting to the Project Managers, each owning packages of internal fit-out, cut and carve and listed refurbishment inside historic fabric, in a city-centre site with very little room. North West based, with the North Manchester hospital work coming online behind it next year. If you have run internal works in a listed building for a main contractor, or you know who has, I would value the conversation.