Opening doors to the built environment
Property and construction shape the places where we live, work and spend our time. Yet for many young people, the industry can feel difficult to understand and even harder to enter.
The range of careers involved is enormous, spanning development, design, construction, sustainability, finance, marketing and community engagement. Many of these roles, however, are not encountered at school or college. Without personal connections to the industry, it can be difficult for a young person to picture where they might fit within it.
At Hadley, we believe businesses have a responsibility to help close that gap. Over the past year, we have created opportunities for young people at different stages of their education, from school insight days and careers talks to structured work experience and longer-term placements.
Whatever the format, we want the experience to be real. That means meeting people from across the business, spending time on our sites, contributing to discussions and working on challenges that genuinely matter to the projects involved. It also means being honest about the industry: the opportunities it offers, the different routes into it and the challenges young people may encounter along the way.
At 980 Great West Road, our redevelopment of the former GSK headquarters in Hounslow, we welcomed 20 students from West Thames College for a four-day industry bootcamp (pictured below). The students were asked to think like developers and create their own proposals for the site.
Their brief went beyond design aesthetics. Working in teams, they considered sustainability, affordable housing, play, community and retail uses, viability, development strategy, sales and marketing. Rather than simply hearing about development in theory, they had to make decisions, balance competing priorities and present their ideas.
We have also provided eight work experience placements for students across Hounslow and delivered careers talks at the University of West London. Our Blair Peach Scholarship provides £5,000 each year to support a student from a low-income household in Hounslow who is studying at the university and hopes to pursue a career in the sector.
Alongside our local partnerships, two University of Manchester students completed two-week placements with Hadley, spending time within the business and gaining practical insight into the different roles involved in bringing a development forward.
Our partnership with Youth Careers is helping us extend this work. Hadley team members have delivered careers talks in four local schools, while 25 Year 10 students from Bolder Academy joined us for an Insight Day. After learning about the development process and exploring the site, they put that knowledge into practice by developing a commercial delivery plan for a new project.
The partnership has also enabled us to provide more sustained individual support. Olly joined Hadley for a 12-week internship, working two days a week alongside Ken Bath, our Site Operations Manager. With an interest in carpentry, he visited live working environments and gained supervised practical experience, including repairing a water pipe, replacing a riser door and changing lamps in light fittings.
“It has been extremely rewarding to see Olly’s progress throughout the placement,” says Ken. “His confidence, practical skills and engagement developed significantly over the 12 weeks. I’m confident the experience has given him valuable insight into construction and a strong foundation for his future career.”
For Hadley, this is the difference between providing work experience and providing meaningful experience. “Work experience should be about more than watching other people work,” says Mabel Ogundayo, Head of Engagement, Social Value and Public Partnerships at Hadley. “We want young people to be treated as researchers, practitioners and contributors, and to be trusted with something real. That means giving them a genuine challenge, access to people across the business and enough support to develop and present their own ideas. They should leave with evidence of what they can do, rather than simply a line on their CV saying they were there.”
This approach asks more of the businesses offering placements. The task needs to be useful, the right people need to make time and students need enough context and support to contribute properly. But that investment changes the experience.
Not every participant will choose a career in property or construction. But each should leave with a clearer understanding of the possibilities available to them, greater confidence in navigating the workplace and the experience of having done something that mattered.
