Young tradies on the rise

Builders’ Business is a column by builders for builders. Its objective is to provide a forum, particularly for small business operators, in which to share knowledge, experience, tips and ideas

Q: Have you seen an increase in young and/or female apprentices?

Firm: McBrimar Homes 

Interviewee: Mike Lowe

Role: Managing Director

Location: Oamaru

Staff: 29

We’ve been taking on two or three apprentices a year for the last four years, so we haven’t seen a sudden increase in the number we take on. Where we have noticed a big difference is the number of school kids that come to us for work experience.

We partner with three schools in the local area through a gateway programme, and we’ve noticed an increase in the number of kids that want to come and give building a go, and we almost always recruit our apprentices from that pool.

The lack of training in the past will take some time to remedy, but with a lot more focus on apprenticeships now, including from the government, things are looking good for the future.

I feel like all businesses owe it to the industry to do their bit and train new builders, so we don’t get another 20 years down the line and end up with the same problems.

Regarding the number of female apprentices, attitudes are changing and I think we’ll see a lot more in the future. We’re seeing more females come through the gateway scheme, but to date, they’ve decided the industry isn’t for them. However, we’d happily take one on if they were interested in a building career.

Firm: Nolan Building

Interviewee: Daniel Nolan

Role: Director

Location: Timaru

Staff: 19 

We’ve seen an increase in both young and female apprentices. We’ve taken on one new apprentice for our building side of the business, and two new female apprentices on the painting side. All three are between 17 and 20 years old. One came to us straight from school while the other two joined us from different industries.

Taking on three apprentices tips our ratio of learners to fully qualified staff highly towards our apprentices, but it’s something that we’re proud of.

One of the biggest challenges restricting us from taking on more is the shortage of skilled staff – we can only have so many apprentices if we can’t recruit foremen to supervise and train them. It’s a bit of a balancing act – our foreman needs to supervise the site, but we also want to make sure he can spend one-on-one time with each apprentice to ensure a good learning experience. 

To be honest, with more skilled staff we could probably take on another three or four jobs. However, we’re trying to futureproof our next four or five years by training in house, so we’ll continue to recruit at least one apprentice per year.

Taking on more females is an objective of ours as their attention to detail is outstanding and both our new starters are bloody good employees – but that’s not to say our other apprentice isn’t! Hopefully, we’ll continue to see an increase of female apprentices, because there doesn’t seem to be the same hesitancy about employing females as there was in the old days

Firm: Summerhill Construction

Interviewee: Peter Swain 

Role: Owner/Director 

Location: Arrowtown

Staff: 8 

We’ve recently taken on one female apprentice, and we always try to recruit at least one or two apprentices per year. I feel like we need to keep them coming through the system, otherwise the industry will suffer, especially now that we’re not getting qualified tradies in from overseas.

We’d normally attract a lot of our staff from overseas, so the border closure has impacted our business significantly. It’s odd, we’re in such a beautiful part of the country, yet there seem to be so few New Zealanders who are interested in settling down here!

Even when the borders are open, one thing that makes it difficult for us to fill our positions is the wait time for visas. If the government could process those quicker, we’d have a much better chance of filling up the backlog of work.