The team behind the successful Marshall Skills Academy has joined forces with Master Developer Urban&Civic to set up Constructed Pathways, to help get local people into the opportunities coming forward in construction across the local area.
18 February 2025
With all the growth planned in and around Cambridge and across the county, the team will help create a sustainable pipeline of skilled people: both helping support growth in the area, and critically ensuring the opportunities are there for local people. Much of their work will focus on providing career paths for people not in education, employment or training (NEET) and supporting those who have been out of work for a while and want to get back into the workplace.
The project was launched by Constructed Pathways founders Steve Coleby and Dan Edwards at an event in the Master’s Lodge of Jesus College, Cambridge, hosted by Sonita Alleyne OBE. They were joined by Dr Nik Johnson, Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and core partners from Urban&Civic, other industry representatives and skills and communities partners.
With start-up funding from Alconbury Weald, Wintringham and Waterbeach master developer Urban&Civic – and working with industry partners, education providers, local authorities and relevant government departments – Constructed Pathways is using its combined experience and expertise to open up opportunities for people to access training, work experience and job opportunities across the area. And crucially working with construction companies to help them access the skills and energy of local people.
Since its formation in October 2024, the Constructed Pathways team has hit the ground running and is already working on a number of projects including a construction skills programme with HMP Peterborough and the delivery of a construction training facility at the Waterbeach development with Inspire2Ignite.
Steve Coleby, Director of Constructed Pathways, said: “The construction industry is facing an estimate skills shortage of around 250,000 people over the next 10 years, and we believe the answer lies in bringing together the right people, at the right time, to collaborate and bring new and creative ideas to overcome these barriers to growth.”
“We’ve been overwhelmed by the support we’ve received for the construction industry, education providers and local authorities for this venture. By adopting a unified approach, guided by a team of industry experts, we believe we can deliver industry-leading construction skills development for Cambridgeshire; bringing stability and predictability to the supply chain and the people who support it.”
Urban&Civic has been involved with Dan and Steve for the last few years, inputting into the scope of work they were leading to understand what the construction industry needs. With three strategic developments underway in the county, Urban&Civic will be creating thousands of opportunities over the 20 plus year timeline of schemes at Alconbury Weald, Wintringham St Neots and Waterbeach.
The Urban&Civic team has been working with the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) to set up all of these three strategic development sites in Cambridgeshire as National Skills Academies for Construction; with contractors, housebuilders and other main suppliers are contractually obliged to provide training and career opportunities for people living in the area.
Their requirements include key performance indicators (KPIs) based on the value of the project to create specific jobs locally, support work placements for local people, carry out educational outreach with local schools and colleges and support training of both new and existing staff in modern construction and green skills.
Constructed Pathways will play a vital role in helping facilitate those KPIs and create a framework to help contractors achieve their requirements.
Rebecca Britton, Regional Director at Urban&Civic, said: “Steve and Dan were doing incredible work in their previous roles in applying all they had learnt in opening up the aviation engineering industry to local people, and applying it to construction. We are so pleased to be partnering with and supporting them in this venture. For us, the National Skills Academy approach is less about forcing KPIs and more about creating a local structure and ecosystem where the developers and contractors we work with are both supporting and benefitting from local people accessing jobs and developing careers in the jobs being created across construction and the built environment.”
“With three big schemes in the county delivering homes, footpaths and cycle ways, green space and commercial buildings, we know we can offer a lot of variety of roles and opportunities over a long timeline: and can work both with young people keen to get into construction, but also in the long term with those who need support and investment in their skills and confidence to come back to employment. This really is just the start of a huge opportunity for the area.”
Dr Nik Johnson, Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, said: “It’s fantastic to see Constructed Pathways bringing together industry leaders, education providers, and local communities to open doors for people across our region. During my visit to Waterbeach and at the launch event, I saw first-hand the passion and commitment behind this initiative. Not only will this partnership address the growing skills gap in the construction sector, but it will also ensure that local people, particularly those who have faced barriers to employment, are given real, lasting opportunities to build rewarding careers. This is exactly the kind of collaborative, community-driven approach we need to support sustainable growth and prosperity in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.”
