Securing this industry’s future is work we have chosen to do deliberately, through social value commitments that are structured, measurable and rooted in the communities where we operate. The next generation of scaffolders, estimators, site managers and contracts managers etc, will not appear by accident. Someone has to go and find them and show them what this industry can offer.

Some of the most capable people never get a straightforward route into our industry. That is an access problem, and access problems are the kind we know how to solve. Our community pathway exists for exactly this reason: it’s direct, structured routes that take young people from their first encounter with the trade through to recognised qualifications and a career they can build a life on.

The industry’s need for new talent is urgent and well documented and for a family business like ours, that has been operating for more than 50 years, the motivation is old and true: we want there to be an industry worth handing over, and people ready to take it.

It is also work we do best in partnership with our customers, because the door to this industry is easier to hold open together. So when Galliford Try invited us to a work experience day, we packed a bag of marshmallows and spaghetti and went to meet the future workforce in person to get them excited about what we do.

There is a particular sound a room makes when people are absorbed in a problem. Part laughter, part argument, part concentration so complete it goes quiet. We heard it at a work experience day hosted by Galliford Try, somewhere around the moment a tower of spaghetti and marshmallows started to lean, and three students dived in to save it.

The brief was: each team received a scaffold drawing, a budget, a pile of materials and a time limit. Then they were tasked to design the structure, cost it, and build it. Every item had a value; every decision had a consequence. The materials were sweets and dried pasta. The problem – load, geometry, cost, time – was the real thing.

Curiosity starts a spark, and joy is what keeps people coming back. We stay with what delights us. We return to it, get better at it, and we sometimes build whole lives around it.

Construction rarely gets to show young people its joyful side. From the outside it reads as hard hats and early mornings, but from the inside it’s one of the most absorbing problem-solving careers there is. Every project is a puzzle with real stakes, every site different from the last, every solution can be a proud moment. The students at Galliford Try felt a version of it that afternoon with a packet of spaghetti and marshmallows. You could hear the interest in the science and laughter in the room.

We believe that a business should leave the places where it works better than it found them. And for an industry a quarter of a million people short, the most valuable thing any construction business can leave behind is a way in for the next generation.

A spark changes an afternoon, and with the right structure behind it, a company’s social value statement stops being a commitment on paper and becomes a person with a career.

Joshua joined M R Scaffolding Services as a Trainee Estimator with no background in the commercial side of construction. Given genuine responsibility, proper mentoring and a clear path forward, he built real capability and now contributes across live projects. It has worked well enough that a second trainee, Alicia, has just joined as a Trainee Commercial Manager.

Social value is at its most powerful when it paves the way for the next generation, and we share that conviction with Galliford Try.

Some of those students we met that day will go into construction, some won’t, but all of them left knowing more than they arrived with, and somewhere in that room, around the laughter and the leaning towers, something caught.

That’s how a future workforce starts: one afternoon, one spark, one person surprised by what they turn out to be capable of, and we are happy to be a part of that.