After taking a career break to care for her children, Claire Follows feared she didn’t have the right experience to pursue a career in construction.
However, she entered the industry through the support of the Women into Homebuilding (WiHB) programme, as part of the May 2025 cohort. Today, Claire is a trainee assistant site manager untypical, having joined the business in January 2026.
The WiHB initiative, launched by the Home Builders Federation in collaboration with national and regional homebuilders, provides a three-week programme including online training and insight sessions, followed by a two-week onsite work experience placement.
Claire, 48, was studying Level 3 bricklaying at the same college her teenage children attended, when she discovered the WiHB programme but admits she nearly talked herself out of it.
She said: “After five years out of work caring for my children, I wasn’t sure if I had what it takes to build a career on a construction site. But I decided that you are never too old to learn, adapt, and grow. Now it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“I clicked on a Facebook advert and WiHB kept calling me, but I kept ignoring them at first, because I thought that to manage all those trades as a site manager you needed to know about all the trades beforehand.
“But one day I did answer the call, we had a chat and the gentleman stressed that the industry has people from backgrounds that have never been in construction. I didn’t really believe him, but then at this time in my life I thought ‘What’s the worst that can happen? It’s an experience’.
“I also thought that if I can survive in a room full of 17- and 18-year-old students, who are just looking at me thinking ‘Why are you here’, then I can survive on a construction site because they’re all far more approachable than a bunch of teenagers.”
Transferable skills were also a big part of the conversation that finally persuaded Claire to apply for the programme.
Claire continued: “It was one of the first times I’d actually had a conversation about how relevant my having run a children’s nursery was and how relevant seven years working within financial services was, especially the paperwork and the organisation side of things, and the people skills.
“I’ve come to realise that there are literally people from all walks of life on site, and they don’t necessarily all have 30 years’ experience in building,” she added.
“I had taken time out to care for my children and am a single mum, but WiHB empowered me as much as I empowered myself.”
Claire has four children aged between 15 and 21. As a single parent, for the past 12 years she has fought, navigated and won some incredibly difficult battles with mental health, eating disorders, autism and Tourette syndrome within the family. Through these experiences, she has developed outstanding resilience, empathy, problem-solving abilities, and people management skills, all of which are highly transferable to both professional and leadership environments.
Claire admits that one of the reasons she went back to college was because she wanted to show her children that it doesn’t matter how old you are, and it doesn’t matter what your situation in life is, you can always put yourself in a different position.
As a trainee assistant site manager with untypical, Claire combines one day a week of structured learning with four days gaining practical experience on site. Working alongside experienced colleagues, she is developing her understanding of site operations, health and safety, quality standards, programme management and customer-focused delivery. Alongside her day-to-day role, she is studying towards an NVQ 4 in Site Supervision and completing an NHBC apprenticeship programme.
Claire said: “When I started there was that nervousness in the back of my mind as there’s such a lot of talk about bringing women into construction, as really it still isn’t the norm.
“However, everyone at untypical has been incredibly supportive. What really surprised me was how open and helpful everyone is, and they seem to quite welcome the fact that women can offer a new approach or unique perspective on embedded practices.
“I did have that fear in my head that everyone must know everything about every single trade, but then I realised you can’t be an expert in every trade.”
Claire has certainly decided that this is the career for her and hopes to grow and develop in her role.
She said: “I would say in five years’ time, I would hope that I’d be confident enough to go into site management.”
“I want to continue learning, progress into an assistant site manager role and eventually become a site manager. Joining untypical has completely changed my life. It’s given me a career I can be passionate about and shown my children that it’s never too late to take a chance on yourself. I’ll never stop believing that with life experience comes the ability to make a difference in any industry with the right attitude and expectations.”
Claire’s journey reflects untypical’s commitment to attracting talent from a wide range of backgrounds and creating opportunities for people who may not have considered a career in construction. Through initiatives such as Women into Homebuilding, the business is helping to build a more diverse workforce while addressing the industry’s skills needs.
