Housebuilding and me: Christy Fawcett of Telford Homes

December 17, 2018 / Keith Osborne
Housebuilding and me: Christy Fawcett of Telford Homes

We speak to Christy Fawcett, a construction trainee with Telford Homes, who tells us about the training she is undergoing, her experience on site and what she feels about choosing a career in the housebuilding industry.

Where are you with your training right now?

I’ve just gone into Year 4 of the trainee scheme so I’ve gone through all the departments and started my specialist modules, where the tail-end of the workbook goes through every single section of construction. I’m making sure I’ve filled out all the tasks, all of the objectives, to then being able to move on to best practice, to then finally complete the workbook.

How’s the scheme been for you?

The old scheme was just a couple of pages, more of a thing that we brought out at appraisal time. It was very specific to small details that weren’t really pushing you into development in your career. We didn’t know how to use it, didn’t really know what it was. It wasn’t really helpful in what we needed. But now, the new scheme is brilliant. It is far more detailed and we know what we’re doing every step of the way.

Have friends and acquaintances in other similar trades and businesses gone through the same thing?

There are a lot of people that either don’t have a scheme or are left to their own devices. There are other companies that do similar things but I still don’t think they’re like ours at all. They get to see what other people are doing but they don’t actually have objectives to find out what the department really does, and how to move forward and how to take that back to your home discipline.

How is your working week broken up?

I spend four days on site at work and then I spend one day at university, Anglia Ruskin in Chelmsford. So, it’s a four-on-one week. At university we have two 12-week semesters a year, over five years.

Is it easy dividing up your time and focus on work and studies?

Yes, absolutely. Our mentors are very keen to know how we’re doing. I have university on a Friday and the following Monday it’s “How was university? How were you doing? What’s your workload? Do I need time?”, a thorough talk about how it’s all going. And if I do need time they say, “Go into the meeting room, have a couple of hours, have a catch up”.

They allow me to put myself away and get some work done, because their ethos is that if I’m thinking about university, I’m worrying about submissions and I’m not going to be as good on site.

In terms of university, a lot of the modules coincide with what I’m doing on site. So when I was doing engineering at university, I was also engineering out on site. But we can’t always predict in what order the university is going to do everything.

Is there any particular department or project that you found most inspiring or most interesting?

Probably the one I’m on at the moment. It’s not the biggest, but it is definitely more complicated than other projects that I’ve been on, Bow Garden Square, The project includes a school with four buildings, private and Shared Ownership residential units above it and a mosque with a final affordable rent block at the back of the project. From starting as green as you can find, knowing nothing about construction, and literally being walked out to point out what machinery is – where I am now, I can see it’s such a major difference. Even when people are talking in the office and I’m thinking “I know what that answer is”. They’re saying things like “Do you reckon they’ll know this? Do you know where I can find this?” and in my head I’m thinking, yes, I know where that is, and I can show them. This is because I have been on rotation in different departments to have more knowledge about how the systems in the other departments work, so I am able to provide better answers than those who have not been through the trainee scheme. As a trainee that obviously really builds your confidence.

What brought you into construction in the first place?

I’ve got a lot of family in construction. I was at college thinking that I wanted to go into psychology. All of my friends and myself were pushed by our college to go to university but the whole idea of going away and leaving my family and life behind and be in debt with no guarantee of a job at the end did not sit well with me. So as my family were already in the industry it was always a path at the back of my mind that I thought I might follow.

My dad, my mum, my stepdad are all in the construction industry – there’s always a lot of talk, and you always pick up on things that your parents talk about. My stepdad works for Telford Homes, so I spoke to one of the guys, pushed and pushed, emailed one of the directors here every single day. I drove them insane, managed to get an interview, and then drove them absolutely insane again asking for the job, and managed to actually get here!

Was there support from friends and family for taking this career path?

Yes, definitely. A lot of my friends are quite jealous of my career – I’ve got so much I can progress to. I get to go to university for free, whereas all my friends are in debt. I’m London-based, so you get the social life. I know that I’m in the right place and I think that’s what my friends are thinking. Loads of them have said, “Christy, are there jobs available? Can get me in there?”

Is rotation between departments essential to you?

The rotation has been critical in my development, because that’s where I learned so much about the job. Without it, if you have a question, you don’t really know how the company works, or who to ask for the answer. Being on rotation, you know what the other departments are doing, and you know whether they’re going to know the answer, or if they don’t, where they’re finding it. That was a massive development for me, to find out where to go for answers.

For example buying, where people come onto site needing something and they just expect it to be here. There are procedures and practices that nobody else knows about, and when you’ve been on the scheme, you know what the buyers do, how they get hold of the materials that you need, what the system is and how long it takes.

Should women feel too out of place in this industry?

Definitely not. There are quite a few women in the office; on site there’s a hell of a lot fewer, but all the guys, they don’t treat you any differently. If anything, you get treated better because they’ll listen to you more. If you speak to them nicely and you don’t have to try and prove a point, they will treat you with respect. Obviously if you’re female and out there trying to say: “I’m a female – listen to me”, then you’re not going to get the same respect is if you just treat them like you would do anybody else.

And I think any other woman that does come into the industry, they won’t need to prove a point because there is no point to prove any more – it’s a job like everybody else.

Have you got a particular target in your career ambitions?

The very top! I’m joking. I definitely want to go into assistant site manager, site manager, project manager and just see how I go from there.

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