Equal - Digital Repository

Background

CEMENT is developing innovative ways to network a number of key partners in Milton Keynes, Acton, Northamptonshire and Hertfordshire. The project will bring together Regional Development Agencies, Learning Skills Council, the Construction Industry Training Board, Local Authorities, Business Links and other strategic organisations, in partnership with private sector employees, to examine the issues and to find ways of tackling skills shortages in the construction industry.

New training structures will be developed and barriers to the recruitment of disadvantaged and excluded groups will be tackled. CEMENT aims to help offenders, ex-offenders, drug abusers, young people at risk, disadvantaged groups and mature workers.

Project partners and private sector employees will examine workforce and employment issues within the construction industry to understand how these shortages can be met. New training structures have been developed in prisons and by training providers to help remove the barriers to the recruitment of disadvantage groups.

The name for the project was chosen because the objective is to support disadvantaged groups by providing learning and training specifically aimed at the construction industry. The English dictionary definition of cement is “the bond or matrix between particles, a binding force, unite firmly, make more secure”. This is very much what the CEMENT project is all about!

In addition, CEMENT stands specifically for Construction-Empowerment-Motivation-Equality-Networking-Tools – all the elements needed to provide the underlying infrastructure that will give our candidates a real opportunity to get back on their feet and support themselves. And the CEMENT DP (Development Partnership) believes that the construction industry is an ideal sector for development of practical skills to give the candidates a sense of achievement, motivation and self-esteem.