A week of work experience can go one of two ways: a week spent shadowing adults at desks, or a week that leaves something behind. We wanted the second for the ten students from a local school who spent a week with Bellway Barking Riverside, split deliberately between office and on-site learning.
In the first half of the week, students were based in the office, introduced to how a housebuilder actually works. They rotated through the land, design and technical, commercial and sales, and construction teams, took part in a property project judged by a panel of Bellway graduates and apprentices, and went on site to explore the Phase 5 building, seeing a live development up close rather than just hearing about one.
The second half moved from planning to making. Working alongside carpenters from PGM Carpentry, the students built three planters from scratch, then handed them over to Thames View Lodge, a local retirement home, where residents still use them today for a weekly gardening club.
That shift, from a week spent observing a business to a week that ended with something the students had made in the hands of people who’d use it, is what made the placement land. It gave ten students a sense of what a career in the built environment could look like from the inside, and gave a local community somewhere real to put that experience to use.
