Esh Group has long championed apprenticeships as a pathway to career success, with apprentices making up no fewer than 8% of the company workforce. 30-year-old Luke Davies joined Esh as a trainee engineer in 2018 and has worked his way through three training courses and four promotions to now lead as a Sub Agent on the £2.5 million Section 278 works project on the A689 outside Hartlepool.
A career in construction was not always the direction for Luke though. After completing his studies at Monkseaton High School Luke went to York University to study Sports Science, which he followed up with a PGCE in teaching. However, Luke claims that a career in teaching wasn’t the right route, and he made the difficult decision to reassess his options. Six years later, he’s on the brink of securing Chartered Civil Engineer status through the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE).
He said: “I used to play football a lot and I combined my sports with teaching initially. I did that for a while and found it wasn’t for me. You must be fully invested in something like teaching to make a career out of it.
“I had family members at Esh at the time, so I was familiar with routes into construction. Thankfully, civil engineering is so broad that I came in as a Trainee Engineer and set out my stall to develop. I could see a lot of directors and the senior leadership team had started out as engineers, so I could tell from the start that there were good opportunities to develop.”
In 2018, he began a Level 5 Higher Apprenticeship in Construction Engineering at New College Durham and he hasn’t looked back, progressing onto a Degree Apprenticeship in Civil Engineering at Teesside University, which he is on the brink of completing next month.
He added: “Esh gives us everyone the chance to develop across the projects they are working on, whether they are new into the team or have several years of experience. I was thrown in at the deep end when I started, but it’s great because I was exposed to different aspects of civils from the outset.
“The support from Esh comes with a freedom within the roles to go out and develop yourself, where we were given the flexibility to head off to university on a Thursday. People try not to bother you on university or college days because they know where you are and that it’s for the greater business goal.
“There’s a clear career pathway here, and you can see senior leadership who have worked their way up through the company. If they see potential in you, they’ll back you.”
Luke explained that taking on the apprenticeship does come with its challenges, like fitting a five-day week into less days, but says the benefits far outweigh the short-term pain, advising people contemplating apprenticeships to just say yes.
“Think about your plan and your future – a younger apprentice needs to look beyond the short-term process of ‘I’ve got to go to college one day a week, what a nightmare.’ In six years, you could be a Sub Agent and fully qualified. An apprenticeship is a process to get you somewhere. It’s not, finish this and then stand still, just keep going forward to the next step. It can be tough but take some of that short-term pain for long-term gain.”
One of the main lessons that has seen Luke rise through the ranks at Esh – from Trainee Engineer, to Engineer, Senior Engineer, and very recently Sub-Agent – is an ability to communicate with a wide cross-section of people. He said: “Knowing how to deal with different types of people is so important and has been a major learning curve through the last few years. There are so many types of people in construction, and you have to find a balance for how you speak to people and how you manage people.”
Reflecting on his own experience, Luke sees apprenticeships as an ideal route for construction professionals. “You can be academically brilliant, but that doesn’t always translate to practical ability,” he said. “Through the apprenticeship, you get to apply your learning in real life. Sometimes there are design-heavy elements in university modules that on paper you could sit back and say ‘that design looks great’ but when you put your contractor hat on, you know it’s just not feasible because of the civils experience you’ve gained in the working environment.”
Esh gives us everyone the chance to develop across the projects they are working on, whether they are new into the team or have several years of experience. I was thrown in at the deep end when I started, but it’s great because I was exposed to different aspects of civils from the outset.”