Welsh homebuilder, Llanmoor Homes, invited a class of students from a local school to visit one of their developments last week. The year 10 students had the opportunity to learn about what it’s like to work in construction first-hand from Llanmoor’s award-winning team.

The students, who are studying for their Construction GCSE at Y Pant School in Pontyclun, visited Padfield Court in Tonyrefail and were lucky enough to hear presentations from Alison Howe from the Construction Industry Training Board, NHBC award-winning Site Manager Dale Dickenson and Llanmoor Homes Construction Director Matthew Grey.

Gareth Jones, who teaches the GCSE in Construction course at Y Pant School, said: “I want to say a massive thank you to Llanmoor Homes for this opportunity. The pupils learned a lot over the course of the visit and were genuinely surprised at the number of different jobs that are undertaken to create the ‘perfect house’.

“Matthew did a fantastic job of explaining and showing the pupils first-hand how a house is built, from ground clearance all the way through to handing over the keys to another satisfied customer.”

The visit comes as the housebuilding industry is calling for more young people to consider a career in construction. The current shortage in skilled construction workers, combined with the fact that one in five construction workers is set to retire within the next 10 years, means that tens of thousands of workers of all skill levels will be needed to keep up with the growing demand for building new houses.

Matthew Grey said: “The opportunities available for young people to build a career within the industry are huge but we need to make sure we’re doing all we can to encourage people to consider looking at housebuilding.”

As a growing industry, housebuilding is full of varied and exciting roles for people with different skills and interests.

Matthew continued: “As well as the traditional construction trades, we employ people in HR, sales, admin, design, Technical and management roles

“Sadly however, until recently the trend has been to favour academic study over practical careers, which has contributed greatly to the current shortages. There’s been a lot of pressure on young people to pursue certain types of careers that aren’t the right fit for everyone. Practical, vocational skills are incredibly valuable, and can lead to a huge variety of exciting, well paid career opportunities.

“At Llanmoor, we want to motivate the next generation of housebuilders so that we can keep producing quality homes for people to build their lives in. We hope that this visit has inspired and encouraged the students from Y Pant School to think seriously about housebuilding as a career.”

Alison Howe, Construction Careers Adviser at CITB Cymru Wales, said: “School events provide a fantastic opportunity to give young people an insight into what it’s like working in the construction industry. I was delighted to meet the students to give them advice and information as they consider their next steps in both education and their future careers.

“There is no doubt the construction industry provides superb opportunities – particularly with CITB forecasting  over 28,000 new jobs being created in the construction sector in Wales over the next five years. CITB, alongside industry, has recently launched a new website called Go Construct, a one stop shop for people to find out more about a career in construction.”