Building a Career

 

For a girl who always loved working with her hands, there is great satisfaction in looking at a finished building and thinking “I had something to do with that”. “Standing back and looking at the building once it’s done, that’s awesome,” says Annette Maitland, 19, who is a Modern Apprentice with Christchurch’s HRS Construction.
 
Her outdoor work can range from framing to putting up exterior linings to interior joinery. But the business side of the industry, tendering for contracts and beating the competition, is also a thrill. “Seeing the job come through and we get it, that’s a buzz,” she says. Annette’s apprenticeship includes construction management as well as building, so one day she may find herself in her boss’s shoes. 

 

“As long as I keep my apprenticeship up, I’ll end up as a trained builder and then with this construction management, it basically gives me qualifications to be a foreman and then the next step up is quantity surveyor, which ties in with construction management,” she says.
 
With quantity surveying jobs paying upwards of $70,000, Annette would certainly be well rewarded for sticking out the four or five remaining years of her apprenticeship. She says her boss has an “optimum” lifestyle. He’s worked hard and receives the benefits of it. Meanwhile, HRS is looking after her, with her own office where she builds her project management skills, and other benefits. “I get a tool allowance and study incentive plan, so it’s a very good scheme.”
 
Days can be long. As well as working, she has two night classes and one day class a week at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology. And she doesn’t look forward to cold mornings when there’s concrete to pour. “But it’s worth it. I can see what’s going to happen at the end of it.” 

 

Already she is getting a feel for directing projects. “If I’m out on site, the foremen are really good because they realise I’m doing the construction management course. They get me looking at plans and deciding myself what needs to be done. I relay back to them and they give me an idea of where everything’s at.”
 
She calls the guys she works with “brilliant” and doesn’t have a problem with the male environment – and that extends to the toilets. Building sites provide Portaloos, which are unisex, and she has no qualms about sharing the facilities at the HRS offi ce. “We have a lot of family guys and they leave the toilets ather clean.”
 
The biggest challenge she finds is with the heavy lifting that is sometimes needed, but she says there are some men who also have problems with lifting things.
 
“Basically you just get more guys, because everybody has their own strength and ability, and once you’ve hit what you’re capable of doing, you get somebody else to give you a hand. And all the guys are fine with that because it goes both ways.
 
“The main thing is you don’t overdo it because you’re going to injure yourself for the rest of your career. Everybody’s in the same boat so you just help each other out. I find this company is really good with that.” 

 

Women’s smaller strength is compensated by other skills, she says. “We’re definitely better on the finer details, finishing work and bits and pieces like that. We do seem to have a better eye for that.”

Annette probably got the building bug from her step-grandfather, who is a builder.  “He just took me under his wing and went,‘This is what we’re doing today, do you want to come?’ That was great.”

 

She enjoyed practical subjects and did woodcraft at school. Since university didn’t appeal she went to Polytech and found that trades were her “thing”. Joinery was her first choice, but “it felt too much like factory work, pushing things through”. Instead Annette capitalised on a work experience programme she had done during her Seventh Form year at Burnside High School. “Actually my old school helped me out and set me up with these guys and here I am, basically.”
 
“I kept in contact with the company and they were happy with my work experience, and they took me on. Very few questions asked. They’d seen my performance. That’s one thing I’d say to women looking to get into the trades – do work experience.”

 

Annette said she would definitely encourage other women to try a building apprenticeship. “It’s a great trade to get under your belt. You can do anything with it. It can take you round the world."