Ethos has launched BuildLondon, a pan-London jobs, brokerage service that connects the construction and infrastructure industry with communities to match job seekers with vacancies, work placements and apprenticeships.
This unique and highly scaleable initiative, for which we are hoping to secure social enterprise status, will be the only London-wide, specialist construction industry brokerage. The ambition is to help coordinate the skills supply chain, offer career development opportunities for local people through a partnership with the Department of Work and Pensions, enable apprenticeships and work placements, and help construction companies to fill vacancies and fulfill planning obligations.
Crossrail originally established a jobs brokerage service in partnership with Jobcentre Plus in March 2010 to ensure that new job opportunities were efficiently advertised, and that candidates with relevant skills were identified for new roles. By April 2015, Crossrail had created over 4115 new jobs, of which 95% were filled by local people, 21% of whom were previously unemployed and 535 apprenticeships.
Discussions between Crossrail and Ethos concluded that Ethos could provide a perfect home for a legacy model build on this service. Having secured agreement with Crossrail, Network Rail and Tideway, this new initiative launched on 4th April, and BuildLondon is now in discussion with a number of other major projects aimed at developing a sustainable and coordinated approach across infrastructure projects.
While employment opportunities can be lost in the current fragmented brokerage system, BuildLondon will capture and exploit these as they arise, pushing them out to an unrivalled unique network of partners: colleges, employment support schemes and diversity initiatives.