School and College talks

By supporting schools to deliver careers advice we hope to expand the talent pool, ensuring we can attract the brightest talent to join our industry.

The challenge for our industry is going to be recruiting enough engineers to deliver the UK’s net zero targets. We therefore need to play our part in attracting talent from all parts of society. Women are particularly under-represented in our industry, so we are working with schools, colleges and Careers Hubs, across the Liverpool City Region to encourage more young women to consider a career in construction.

Over recent months, Matt Breakwell, Kimpton Business Development Manager and Head of our ESG Team has been delivering talks at Thrive Careers Hub, in Dale Street. They support local care-experienced young people and other disadvantaged groups, to offer advice, support and training opportunities to those who may otherwise not have access to mainstream training.

We are also supporting Regeneration Brainery to set up a Liverpool Hub and have delivered presentations to college and university students from Liverpool that want to learn more about careers in building services engineering.

Regeneration Brainery is an Educational Programme to teach and inspire the next generation of property leaders. A key aim of the programme is to encourage a more diverse industry and get more young people into Property and Regeneration.

For the youngest pupils, Matt and Grace both volunteer as Enterprise Advisors for Liverpool City Region and Careers Wales. This involves them working with schools to support the delivery of the Gatsby benchmarks by talking to students about careers within Construction and the Mechanical Services industry.

They spoke to pupils and students about their perceptions of the industry and found that 10 year olds use words like scary, dirty and dangerous and 14 year olds are usually unaware of the diverse range of opportunities on offer. By engaging with children, we hope to change some of the stereotypes and make engineering an attractive career choice to all.

Speaking about the visits, Matt Breakwell said “The reception has been fantastic with loads of enthusiasm and interest in what we’re doing and the opportunities within the industry.

It’s been great to break down some of the myths and misconceptions about construction and it’s not all men and muddy boots. There are some genuinely exciting, well paid opportunities for people with a diverse set of skills, where creativity matters and you can make a difference.”

The images below show a small section of the talks in action.