Construction Diploma: contractors confused over work experience

Work experience for students on the Construction and Built Environment (C&BE) Diploma must be co-ordinated at a national level to be effective, according to the Civil Engineering Contractors Association (CECA).

The association is calling for government guidance on C&BE work experience after it discovered a wide disparity in the expectations of colleges offering the Diploma.

Joe Johnson, CECA's training director said: "Different training colleges are asking for different things. One national contractor found the six colleges it was liaising with all wanted something completely different. Apart from the strain this puts on firms offering work experience, there is also the question of how you measure the value of this experience if it differs across the country. There need to be guidelines."

ConstructionSkills backed CECA's call this week. Qualifications and standards chief Nick Gooderson said: “There clearly needs to be a work placement package that contractors can use with training consortia so that we can ensure consistency and credibility.”

In the absence of government guidance the Diploma's Construction Employers Group are planning to put together a work experience template.

One member, Bruce Boughton, Lovell Partnership's training manager, said: "Rather than students shadowing someone all day, the work experience could be structured around the story of a construction project from planning and land acquisition through construction to sale, using a sample project, site visits and visits to planning committee meetings and so on."