Bellway hosts youth visit to Newcastle headquarters to promote construction careers
Bellway hosted a group of 19 young people at its Newcastle headquarters and Western Grange development in Killingworth to raise awareness of career opportunities in the construction industry.
The visit was part of a week-long bootcamp organised by Regeneration Brainery, which aims to increase diversity in the property and regeneration sector by providing job awareness and hands-on work experience for 14 to 21-year-olds considering careers in construction.
Programme highlights
On the third day of the bootcamp, students began at Bellway’s Woolsington head office, where they were introduced to key business functions including commercial operations, architecture, construction, sales and marketing, and customer care.
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The day included interactive activities such as a construction team challenge using dominoes and a session on planning, analysing, and pitching a potential land acquisition.
In the afternoon, the group visited the Western Grange site to see homes at various stages of construction and take part in a bricklaying challenge.
Laura Cooper, Head of Learning & Organisational Development at Bellway, said: “Faced with an increasing skills shortage, it’s absolutely vital for the construction industry to attract people from a diverse range of backgrounds, enabling it to draw on the widest pool of talent available.
“In order to do this, it must not only raise awareness about the variety of opportunities that exist but also give young people first-hand experience of what these roles entail.
“Regeneration Brainery aims to do exactly that, by connecting young people thinking about a career in construction to experienced professionals who can give them a valuable insight into what working in the industry is really like.
“We were really pleased to partner with this forward-thinking project and it was a pleasure to host the group of young people on the day.
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“We hope they found the experience useful and that they now feel better informed about the range of exciting career opportunities that are open to them.
“Partnering with organisations such as Regeneration Brainery complements the work we already do to raise awareness of careers in construction through our ongoing outreach with schools and colleges in the areas around our developments.
“As a company, we are committed to increasing the ethnic and gender diversity of our workforce while continuing to provide opportunities for young people to enter the industry through our graduate and apprenticeship programmes.”
