Construction Old school methods
delivering skills for the modern construction industry
Why K&M McLoughlin Decorating Ltd launched the ‘Skills for Jobs’ initiative with the opening of their new Training and Exhibition Centre.
K&M McLoughlin Decorating, one of the country’s leading decorating firms, has launched its ‘Skills for Jobs’ training programmes from a new purpose-built training and exhibition centre in Islington. The aim: “To take those people failed by education and forgotten by society and give them chance to show they are ready and able to work.”
The new centre is a collaboration between clients, leading manufacturers and the wider construction industry and offers real jobs to successful candidates after 4 weeks training.
‘Skills for Jobs’ is a three-strand training model successfully piloted with more than 600 applicants over the last 6 years. Developed by the firm’s CEO, Kevin McLoughlin, MBE, and his senior management team, it plugs key skills gaps in the construction industry by creating new opportunities for school leavers, unemployed young people, and by upskilling older workers.
Hundreds of new jobs both within the firm and at other decorating companies have been filled at the end of the 4-week program with some of the original cohort now filling supervisory roles within the industry.
“It was evident to me many years ago that we had an aging employee base and a skills shortage in the construction industry was inevitable,” says Kevin McLoughlin. “We set out to try to do something about it.”
K&M McLoughlin’s was established thirty years ago and is a family business with Kevin’s sons and daughter all playing major roles within the company over the years. K&M now directly employs more than 180 decorators working on diverse large-scale public and private decorating projects such as the British Museum, the Savoy Hotel and Wembley Stadium, as well as being retained by various local authorities and block management companies.
“It is clear that the procurement of public and private contracts leaves very little margin for contractors - leaving those further down the pecking order with very little to plough back into training” says McLoughlin. “As a result, those companies can be reliant on unskilled or untested agency labour and suscep- tible to escalating labour costs as we recently saw on the Tottenham Stadium project.”
Indeed, latest figures from The Federation of Master Builders illustrate this acute skills crisis by revealing that more than a quarter of firms are currently struggling to hire qualified painters and decorators. The recent collapse of Carillion brought the issue of the tight operating margins faced by suppliers into sharp focus.
K&M MCLOUGHLIN DECORATING LTD
TEL: 0207 688 6888 13
WWW.KMDECORATING.CO.UK
“We’ve long campaigned for a more sustainable way of awarding and managing large construction and buildings maintenance contracts,” says McLoughlin. “Consideration should be taken in the early stages of procurement to ensure that contractors at all levels can adequately resource the contracts they are bidding for. Building a well-trained workforce is a key component in this and we believe our ‘Skills for Jobs’ programme is a model that other sectors could easily adopt. It gives young people the skills they need, offers up-skilling op- portunities for those who are already working or are unemployed, and provides industry and customers with properly qualified reliable staff. Moreover, it costs the government and taxpayer nothing.”
The new training centre brings all three strands of ‘Skills for Jobs’ under one roof: Pre-employment training module to teach and install the key disciplines required by employers such as attendance, punctuality and an understanding of commercial standards and speed to school leavers and young job-seekers.
Apprenticeships, which provides key professional skills training for young people.
Improvers, a training scheme for people over the age of 24 who are looking to learn or improve their professional decorating skills.
The three strands are entirely funded by K&M McLoughlin with the support of industry partners and the centre has this year been endorsed as a Direct Con- tact Exhibitions CPD Centre.
If you are recruiting or are interested in visiting or hiring the centre for your next CPD or product demonstration event please contact Charlotte Page 0207 688 6888
charlotte@kmdecorating.co.uk
For all work enquiries please contact Neil Edwards 07426 391019
neil@kmdecorating.co.uk
For pricing requests email
estimating@kmdecorating.co.uk
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