National Careers Week

At Rodgers Leask, we take great pride in promoting the fantastic range of careers available within the construction sector.

For ‘National Careers Week’, we take a look at some of the initiatives we have supported in the buildup to and during the course of this week along with a number of areas where we are providing longer term support.

STEM Project at Ashover Primary School

Graduate Engineer Sanjay Jethwa and Director Kriston Harvey recently spent an afternoon at Ashover Primary School in support of their annual STEM project.

The pupils there are tasked with learning about the career and day to day activities for someone involved in a STEM related role.

It was great to see the enthusiasm of the pupils and they engaged really well when discussing the type of work we are involved with.

Sanjay presented to the Key Stage 2 (KS2) pupils and set them a task to have a go at designing a fictional site with some very impressive ideas and work produced in a relatively short space of time – who knows, maybe there are a few budding engineers amongst them!

Derby College

This week we have had 3 students from Derby College visit our Derby office to gain an insight into the work we do and the careers available within an engineering consultancy.

The 2^nd Year HNC and 2^nd Year T Level students were all interested in learning more in preparation for them entering the industry.

The session included a review of their course content and subjects covered, their aspirations going forward and an introduction to the design work we undertake at Rodgers Leask, including worked examples using some of the design software with our Ryan Holden.

We finished up with some brief mock interviews and discussions around potential next steps for interviewing for Apprenticeship Degree opportunities.

Parkside Community School

Working alongside the Chesterfield Property and Construction Group and Chesterfield Borough Council, Director Kriston Harvey has this week attended Parkside Community School to take part in a workshop session to help promote the career opportunities available within the construction sector to around 70 Year 10 students.

Following on from an initial visit at the end of 2022, the workshop set the students an activity-based task to design a building to complete the Northern Gateway site in Chesterfield.

The students were encouraged to consider what was needed in the town centre, the constraints and opportunities on and around the site, how the layout could work and who would be needed to deliver the project – the key message being to highlight the significant number of career opportunities available with links to the construction sector.

Kriston commented ‘The enthusiasm from the students was fantastic! Once the first person plucked up the courage to put their ideas forward the session flowed really well and the students demonstrated their awareness of some key considerations such as Health & Safety and Sustainability.’

Nottingham Trent University

This week saw the Graduate and Placement Careers Fair take place at NTU. Peter Sparham (Associate Director) and Junaid Ahmed (Undergraduate Civil Engineer) from our Nottingham office were in attendance to discuss placement and graduate opportunities available at Rodgers Leask as well as all things relating to construction and the built environment.

This continues a long standing relationship between Rodgers Leask and NTU which has also seen our Matt Koren (Principal Engineer) working with final year Architecture students at the university to provide Structural Engineering advice and guidance in support of their design projects.

Around the Business

As well as these recent events in the lead up to and during National Careers Week, we are also proud to be providing ongoing careers support in a number of other areas.

Our Andy Leask takes a keen interest in this area – he sits on the Professional Construction Advisory Board at Derby College and also chairs the Employment and Skills Group for the Derbyshire Economic Partnership. In his role with the CBI, he sits on the SME Employment and Skills Group which interfaces with the Department for Education.

Next week, Lee Cutts (Senior Structural Technician) will be supporting an event at the City of Derby Academy to provide mock interviews for around 180 Year 10 students. These interviews are a great way of preparing young people for the outside world and with support from the business community can help to provide a different perspective to the guidance provided by the school.

Our Longbridge office provides support to the University of Birmingham for the Engineering Geology Module. This has involved in the past the students producing a geotechnical report for a live site using real data and forming part of the degree course work. The students will regularly visit the office during the module to engage with our engineers and have even been able to visit the sites.

Andy Miles, Principal Transport Planner, will once again next week visit the University of the West of England to provide a Transport Planning lecture to students studying in their final year for a Masters in Planning degree. The lecture will not only cover the Transport Planning work we undertake, but also give the students an insight to the world of pre-planning and the likely work they will be involved with during their careers.

In our various offices across the UK, we regularly provide work placement opportunities whether short term or as part of a sandwich degree course. We also have a great crop of Graduate Engineers and Apprentices and will be looking to recruit further new talent in 2023.

For more information relating to the range of careers available at Rodgers Leask, please get in touch via e-mail at careers@rodgersleask.co.uk