HomeHomeFrom Scott Lechley, founder, Lechley Associates and the Lechley Community. August 2026.
The industry needs 206,000 extra people between 2026 and 2030.
That is 41,200 every year, into a workforce we have failed to replenish for two decades (CITB Construction Workforce Outlook, June 2026). We all know these numbers. We quote them at conferences and put them in strategy documents.
Here is the number we do not talk about. A sixteen year old who decides tonight to find out how to join this industry will land on a dozen disconnected websites, half of them selling something, and give up. So will their parents. So will the thirty five year old who wants a career change. We are not losing these people to better industries. We are losing them to industries that are easier to understand.
We have built the missing piece: a free, complete, honest guide to getting in. What the industry actually is. All six routes, from foundation apprenticeship to degree to straight onto site. What apprentices are really paid and how to land one. Which courses are worth the money. Free mentoring from working directors, matched personally. Nothing on it is an advert and nothing ever will be.
It lives at community.lechley.com/get-into-construction and went live this week, on A level results day.
The same invitation has gone to ministers across housing, skills, construction and education.
Now we want to turn a page into an alliance, and we are asking you to join it. Membership costs nothing and there are no logo requirements, no exclusivity and no catch.
List your apprenticeships, junior roles, placements and work experience on the page, free, in front of exactly the audience your early careers budget is chasing. Offer site visits or placement weeks and we will route demand to you. Lend us your directors for one hour a month as mentors.
Take the guide and the mentoring service as a free resource for your careers provision. Book us to present to your students, in person or online, no pitch attached.
Whatever you run, from a national programme to a one-school partnership, we will list it, link to it and send people your way. Take our content and reuse it as your own if that is more useful. The next person looking for a way in should find all of us, not none of us.
Link to it. Stress test it. Tell us what is wrong and we will fix it within the week. Put it in front of the programmes you already fund. And when the next skills conversation happens, remember that information is infrastructure too.
1 organisation has joined so far.
Members are listed by name once they have said we may, and we have checked the details.
We will hold up our end: the page stays free, stays current, stays honest, and carries no advertising. Every link checked, every claim sourced, every mentor a working professional who volunteered. Mentoring is for those aged 16 and over, and no introduction is made for a 16 or 17 year old until a parent or guardian knows they have asked.
One industry. One straight answer to the only question that matters: “how do I get in?”
Two minutes. You will hear from us once, with what happens next, and nothing is asked of you that you have not offered.
Scott is away until 2 September. Every sign-up is logged and read daily while he is away; personal replies and introductions follow from the 2nd.
An employer, a head of careers, someone who runs a programme, someone in a department. Send it on. That is how this grows.
Scott Lechley · Founder, Lechley Associates · community.lechley.com/get-into-construction