Hello,
I’m in my second year of A levels (I’m 19 and will be 20 by the time I finish due to changing from another subject) and feel like it’s harder and harder to continue going to college as I don’t see any point in it but its what my parents want.
I think you might either become a contractor by academic or vocational path, I hate academics and I assume the vocational path is for me. I have English and Maths gcse (both 6) if it has any relevance.
Is starting working in construction and then getting on an apprenticeship a viable route for becoming a contractor?
Or would be finishing A levels and then searching for work and an apprenticeship be better?
Thank you in advance.
5 comments
Might as well finish your a levels so you have something to fall back on. What part of construction are you interested in?
Technically there are no minimum requirements (educational, that is) for becoming a general contractor.
Anyone has £13 to form a limited company can become one. Well, the rest is more complicated than that but yeah.
You can continue your college, and work part-time in construction to get a feel of things but it’s not a requirement.
I have a friend and she literally never did any work like that (she was thinking of becoming a DJ one month prior) and she’s doing renovation / repair work as a contractor now.
I work in construction and have decades of experience. Work can vary quite a lot. It’s not so much what particular structures you wish to work on, it’s much more what actual role you want. For example, there’s the following:-
Site based
Labourer
Tradesman
Foreman
Site manager (very demanding)
Various contractors for more specific roles like cladding contractors
Surveyor
Driver
Office based
Architecture
Cad operator
Office manager
Estimator
Head of a specific technical role eg lead connection designer (very niche and maths heavy)
Project engineer
Contracts manager
There can be quite a bit of overlap between roles and even Site and office based.
If you’re already part way through your a levels it makes reasonable sense to finish them if you can.
It’s fairly common for people to start out on much less academic roles and then get more academic and office based as they aged.
Feel free to ask questions or discuss further.
>I’m in my second year of A levels
Finish them, there’s no point quitting now when you’re so close to finishing them.
Apprenticeships are a good way to go afterwards
A levels won’t really be important in construction, they’re mainly for getting a place in uni. Apprenticeships are usual route but I’d think long and hard about what trade you’d like to do, it’s usually quite specialised. It is also a possibility to start as a labourer and do an apprenticeship later on.
Personally I’d say, stick with your A levels, better to have them and not need them than vice versa. Consider other things too, I actually despise construction, the work is physical, noisy and dirty at times but mainly its full of grumpy old fogies. The British public generally writes you off as a lazy, money grabbing cowboy too.
That said, I’ve had worse. It’s not a job that’s ever going to go away either. Lots of variation from chucking up new builds to renovating listed buildings. Depending on your firm you might travel about a bit.