This week (Monday 8th – Sunday 14th February) is National Apprenticeship Week across the UK and it aims to shine a light on the amazing work being done by employers and apprentices across the country. At CMB, we have always focused a great deal on our apprenticeship scheme as we see its importance in developing a skillful task force.
We first initiated the CMB apprenticeship scheme in 1993 and 28 years later, we have seen almost 100 apprentices make their way through our apprenticeship programme. Through our ‘train and retain’ policy, 95% of these individuals have stayed with us over their years, progressing into supervisors, site management staff and in some cases, even directors and are the backbone of the business.
However, it’s not just about taking young people on and training them to pass their exams, it’s about training them to the highest standard possible and we have showcased that through the variety of awards CMB and their apprentices have won over the years. Just some of these include:
BESA National Apprentice of the Year
BESA Regional Apprentice of the Year
BESA Adult Trainee of the Year
BESA Highly Commended Apprentice Awards
CAVC Apprentice of the Year
BESA Apprentice Trainer of the Year
BESA Training Initiative Provider of the Year
BESA Contractor of the Year
Our craft apprentices all go through a four-year course which is currently a mixture of site work, college day release, and time spent in our CMB apprentice workshop, with all encouraged to progress to supervisory and site management roles on completion of their training.
CMB are always striving to stand out from competitors in the market when conducting their apprenticeship programme and that is in part what makes our scheme so successful. We offer our apprentices a long-term career path when they join our team and not just another regular job. This, combined with our ‘train and retain’ philosophy, has enabled us to consistently be the number one organisation in the industry to join as an apprentice and our yearly over-subscribed application process will attest to that.
We also offer and have developed our own in-house training workshops to pass on traditional skills to our apprentices which supplements the practical training at CAVC for their onsite work. We also took the unusual decision to offer craft apprenticeships to young women and that has also proved dividends with one of our intakes winning BESA Apprentice of the Year and CAVC Apprentice of the Year. It’s all part of standing out from the usual crowd in this industry.
The general view of apprenticeships can be misunderstood and misleading and they are in fact more relevant now than ever. At CMB, we consider an apprenticeship to be of equal value to any other qualification and therefore there should be no limit as to how successful apprentices can be. Our very own Managing Director, Steven Borley, started off his career as a junior apprentice and has since built a nation-wide organisation employing hundreds of people across the country. This level of success is transparent across the whole company with numerous directors having started their careers as apprentices.
Steve commented: “Our company is built on apprenticeships as its foundation and its structure is its family values, quality and ambition. We encourage our apprentices to “Dare to Dream” as I did 46 years ago. I was influenced by the Kinks single of the day “I’m not like everybody else” which had some very powerful lyrics in it which struck a chord with me.”
We want to continue advocating for the importance of apprenticeships in both this country and industry and we welcome any applications from candidates. You can visit our ‘Careers and Apprenticeships’ page on our website for more information or contact communications@cmbeng.co.uk.
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