Encouraging young people into the industry – work experience diary

June 2024

Hi, my name is Ellie. I’m 15 and have recently finished year 10 at high school. I’ve also just completed a week of work experience working with my Mum where I’ve been introduced to lots of new people and learnt lots about an industry that I didn’t think could be very interesting, builders merchants!

The company that my Mum works for is called Civils & Lintels. They are a specialist distributor of hard landscaping and heavyside materials for house builders and ground workers up and down the country. In case you don’t know what that means, it’s basically lots of big pipes and concrete items like big rings and kerbs! Mum is the marketing manager and has worked there for 4 years now – she started during lock down and gets to work at home, but for our week together, she drove me all over the country to find out as much as I could about the world of C&L.

My task was to write a short article about my week and what I learnt about the industry from a young person’s point of view as I am told that many of the people who work at builders’ merchants are middle aged or nearing retirement, so they need some younger people to join the industry to keep it going.

Day one

Mum had arranged for an introduction from Allan Wright, the Managing Director of C&L. I was nervous to talk to Allan as he’s like the Head teacher for C&L, but he was friendly and helpful and welcomed me to the business. He explained more about the history of C&L, how many people work there, how much money it makes and other interesting facts. I asked him why he thinks young people should consider working in merchants and he told me that he started off working in a small merchant on the trade counter and has worked his way up to become MD of a £250 million pound company! Impressive! He said that the industry is full of opportunities for people if you work hard and apply yourself. You don’t necessarily need lots of qualifications either.

We then picked up some donuts and travelled to north Nottingham to visit one of the lintels hubs. C&L have 4 locations that specialise in the distribution and stocking of lintels for the companies who build houses in the UK. Lintels are steel or concrete bars that go above windows or doors in houses to strengthen the walls. There are 4 main steel lintel manufacturers and C&L have loads of all of them. They also have their own delivery lorries to deliver the lintels to the building sites so they can get the lintels to the right place just when the builders need them.

I learnt lots about the different types of lintels and that most builders use standard ones, but C&L offer builders the option of sending the lintels “plot banded” which is something that the other merchants don’t offer, and I thought that was a great idea as it will be really helpful for the builders.

The team there were really friendly and took time to tell me about what they do there and explained that teamwork is really important and that it’s a really good place to work.

Day two

Today we travelled to London Civils which are based near Heathrow airport. The first thing that struck me was the size of the building and yard! We met Rob Habermass, the depot manager and Mark Davis, the Regional Director and had a look at the trade counter to see some of the smaller items that customers can pick up from us, and then we had a tour around the huge yard to learn more about the products and also about the safety part and how there’s designated spaces for the lorries to be loaded with the electric forklift trucks. I like that they are thinking about the environment. Rob told me all about the things they have to do to be able to deliver products into Central London. There’s a specialist online site that they have to use and book in deliveries, and the average speed the drivers do in London is just 7mph so the drivers have to be patient! This depot alone makes around £30 million a year and they plan to increase that to £50 million!

We also met with a Key Accounts manager who travels around meeting larger customers and winning orders for the depot to send out. They include the companies who do the roadworks and build new motorways and roundabouts… he told us that they sometimes help out and volunteer to do things like painting and litter picking in the local area to make sure the local community are happy with what they’re doing.

Whilst we were there, someone from one of the manufacturers, Polypipe, was there for a meeting but Mum used to work there and knew him, so it was nice for her to see him and have a quick catch up.

Day three

Today we worked from home as Mum had some teams meetings to go on. I used the opportunity to start writing my diary and then I sat in on the first teams call. This was with a lady who helps Mum with copywriting and PR. Marketing is all about making sure customers know about what C&L do and offer and trying to get more customers. The marketing team look after the website, write content for social media, send emails to customers and run adverts online and in industry magazines. Mum also organises getting photographers in to take great photos of the products, lorries and people, and sometimes arranges videos to be made using drones too which is pretty cool. Mum went through all the latest news with the copywriter to make sure that they aren’t falling behind or miss a deadline. I enjoyed seeing some of what Mum has to do every day whilst I’m normally at school.

Day four

We took a trip to the depot at Bolton today. This is the only location that stocks both civils products and lintels. They have a big trade counter and the Key Accounts north team are based here too. We met with Matt Jackson who is the lintels manager, but also is a key member of a group of people from across the business who focus on the wellbeing of the employees. Matt talked us through some of the things they’ve done to help like setting up a wellbeing space, training people so that each location has someone who you can talk to if you’re stressed or worried and raising as much money as possible for the charity partner, Mates in Mind. C&L even added an advert on the back of every delivery lorry which promotes a free text helpline that anyone can use if they need someone to talk to.

We filmed Matt stood in front of one of the lorries for Mates in Mind. They were having a conference and wanted messages from their supporters and Mum edited the video and sent it to them later on.

There are lots of women that I’ve met so far, but there are much more men working at C&L and men struggle to talk about their feelings so I think it’s great that C&L are doing lots to help encourage men to talk more.

Day five

The last day of my week saw us drive to Stoke on Trent. This is another civils depot with a pretty big yard. The team here look after C&L’s biggest customers so I was able to find out how C&L manage to look after a national company from one location. I also spoke to a delivery driver about the TACO card which tracks their journeys to make sure they don’t drive for longer than 4.5 hours without a break. He was downloading the data from his card and he explained it to us. Even Mum didn’t know about this. She says “every day is a school day at C&L” – there’s always something to learn!

We were very lucky to be able to share some pizza with the team before heading back home to type up my notes from the past couple of days.

What struck me from my week is that everyone was really friendly and kind and seem to enjoy what they do. Many told me that they never considered working in a builders merchant when they were at school, but once they started, they have stayed for years. The people make it fun and enjoyable and they all look out for one another. There are loads of different jobs you could do – Delivery drivers, yard staff, internal sales people helping the customers, key accounts managers, depot managers, finance, IT, marketing and HR to name a few.

Thank you to everyone who I met during my week. I really enjoyed meeting you all and learning more about what it’s like to work in a specialist builders merchants. I was surprised about how many job types there are and would encourage any young person to consider it as a career choice.