Thursday 10 July 2025 | JW Marriott Grosvenor House Hotel
Training Excellence
Building Heroes
Supporting the armed forces community to excel in new careers within construction
Building Heroes is the UK’s only tri-service charity dedicated to providing funded training and employment assistance for the Armed Forces Community, aiding their transition to new careers after leaving the military, and ensuring support and opportunities for those who have served to keep us safe.Utilising their distinctive ‘Recruit, Reskill, Redeploy’ model and in collaboration with Vistry Group, they have established an on-site training culture that embraces innovative practices of accelerated learning. This approach responds to the industry’s growing workforce needs while simultaneously guiding veterans onto pathways for successful civilian careers and fulfilling civilian lives.
Danny Sullivan Group
Industry skills shortage – run from it or run towards it?
At Danny Sullivan Group, our mission is to build better lives by enhancing communities and putting people at the core of everything we do. Through our ongoing commitment to skills investment our workforce has the opportunity to continuously develop and achieve their highest potential. In a time of industry uncertainty, we have doubled down on our commitment to creating meaningful career development opportunities, which has in turn lead to tangible business growth.
Gleeds Digital
Upskill
Gleeds' "Upskill", enhanced in 2023, epitomises our dedication to digital and data literacy excellence, making us prime candidates for the Training Excellence of the Year award. Revolutionising continuous learning in construction, Upskill offers diverse training, including workshops and apprenticeships, fostering a culture of innovation. Our success in hackathons and development of "Intelligence Benchmark" highlight our staff's enhanced skills. With a new digital unit led by industry experts, over 200 participants, and a growing list for 2024, Upskill demonstrates our commitment to advancing construction consultancy and setting new industry standards, affirming our leadership in future-proofing careers and promoting data-driven practices.
Horbury Group
Planning for the future
Horbury's ‘Planning for the Future’ initiative truly demonstrates how the construction sector can support people to achieve their full potential and retain talented staff. Horbury thought about what capabilities drive success beyond traditional construction skills training and created a way of assessing and measuring this. What followed was a programme combining leadership development, coaching, mentoring and the opportunity to lead on change projects. Continued sponsorship, engagement and mentoring for the participants from the CEO and Directors have ensured this programme has achieved what it set out to, with a third of those taking part already promoted to new roles.
LABC
Building Control - people development programme
The lasting impact on our local authority membership is profound. We've transformed the public service workforce and significantly raised national public safety standards. Together with our members, we’ve channelled our passion and commitment to public service through equipping local authorities and the individuals within them with the right skills, knowledge and experience to make the right public safety decisions. That said, our vision extends beyond accolades – it's about developing individuals who will in turn create a safe, sustainable, and inclusive environment for us all.
Laing O’Rourke
Rethinking Safety through Inclusion + Wellbeing programmes
In 2023 LOR developed 3 RSTIW programmes (Leadership, Supervisor & Engagement) which are all unique, highly engaging and interactive, share a common goal and language, and together are enabling a culture shift at LOR, where our leaders and supervisors are able to create psychologically safe environments, and our people feel able to speak up and caredfor. These programmes will not only reach all employees, but our clients, JV partners and supply chains too. The feedback so far from each programme has been phenomenal, with real positive changes being made on an individual basis & a project/workplace basis following attendance.
Lee Marley Group
Lee Marley Academy
What makes our entry award winning is the unique and innovative employer-educator partnership we have formed with London South Bank Technical College to deliver our 14-month bespoke Level 2 brickwork apprenticeship programme from their state-of-the-art facilities using our own highly skilled training team.The model is a step-change in apprenticeship delivery combining extended periods of workshop and classroom-based training reinforced with on-the-job work experience on Lee Marley projects across London.Our apprentices work to industry-leading standards in a safe and supportive environment and benefit from the coaching and mentoring Lee Marley provides so they can build long-term careers in construction.
McLaren Construction
Creating a digital platform for learning, development and behavioural change
Driven by an incentive to adapt, exceed expectations in the way deliver our services and change behaviours in alignment with the latest building safety regulations, McLaren invested in and implemented its Competency and Development Hubs: a digital platform where all our employees self-assess their competencies, receive a rating on all relevant skills and are assigned training programmes. This is helping McLaren meet the standards of new building safety regulations and set out a model of best working practices for a modern construction industry.
Reds10
Finding superpowers
Reds10 consistently challenges its leadership, staff, supply chain and the industry to be the best they can be. Learning is embedded in company guiding principles, with leadership committed to finding everyone’s superpower. Reds10 has taken a multi-prong approach to learning, training and skills sharing, delivering over 1,000 hours of training in 2023-4. This has included monthly lunch & learn sessions, groundbreaking line manager training, a dedicated apprenticeship workshop with a devoted mentor and a revolutionary Dual Career Pathway creating a sustainable future for women pursing dual football and construction careers.
Star Scaffolding
Training Excellence
Star Scaffolding, which employs 106, invests more than £30,000 a year in people development. In 2023, 72 colleagues benefitted from training. The company currently has 17 apprentices, more than any other scaffolding business in the West Midlands. Star goes above and beyond to make training accessible to people who often struggle to take advantage of opportunities. It has implemented an initiative to support neurodivergent individuals and works closely with a local prison to help rehabilitate prisoners and improve their employment prospects. Having thoroughly embedded a culture of training, Star regularly celebrates colleague development through awards, social media and team communications.
Willmott Dixon
The Willmott Dixon University
The Willmott Dixon University brings all our learning into one place, allowing our people to get what they need, when they need it. It improves productivity by allowing our people to make better use of the time they spend training by linking learning directly to their job role and allowing them to mix remote learning with in-person modules. They learn in a way that suits them – whether a 15-minute online module, a deep-dive course or leadership programme, or utilising the new School of Coaching.Now, 95% of our people say they have the learning they need to succeed.