BCS launches graduate and apprenticeship programme 2021

This is the third year of the programme, which is run in partnership with Southbank University, and is part of the company’s commitment to helping to tackle the well-documented skills shortage in the engineering and data centre sector. BCS will be on the lookout for future datacentre professionals and leaders and is hoping to attract top candidates. 

Once chosen the successful students will be involved in every aspect of the BCS business, which provides a full range of services solely within the business critical and technical real estate environments, working across the entire client portfolio supporting and learning from the experienced team. This will include getting to see first-hand large-scale construction projects from the blueprint stages right through to the delivery and is designed to support any apprenticeship study requirements.

Chris Coward, Head of Project Management at BCS, said: “The skills shortage in the industry has been an issue for over a decade with the financial crash in 2008 leading to a lost generation of technical engineers and construction professionals which has been slow to recover. Many organisations have decided that taking on graduate trainees and/or apprentices is just not practical but we have taken the decision to forge ahead with our scheme as we believe it is now more vital than ever that we invest in the skillset of the next generation of engineers, cost and project managers.”

Imogen Paton was one of last year’s successful candidates and started on the scheme in September 2020. She said: “The last few months have been brilliant. I have been able to visit project sites in Germany and London, worked on some project drawings; and been involved with the team on documents, cost plans, programmes and tendering. This has all been done in a Covid safe way and I’ve also passed my first university module too.”