7 February 2025

Seeking Participants

The New Zealand Institute of Building, in partnership with the Building and Construction Training Fund and Building Innovation Partnership, is engaged in a project to map career pathways across the commercial construction sector.

We are seeking industry professionals to participate in interviews and workshops to help develop a comprehensive career pathways framework for our industry. The industry strands we are looking at include architectural consultancy and design; engineering consultancy and design; quantity surveying; construction management; project management; facilities management; digital delivery management; building control and compliance; urban design and landscape architecture.

We are currently seeking participants for two phases of research:

Industry framework development

We are seeking representatives from industry organisations to participate in interviews and workshops to:

• Review and validate role descriptions and competency frameworks
• Adapt international best practice for the New Zealand context

Time commitment: One 60-minute interview plus optional participation in follow-up workshops.

Career journey stories 

We want to hear from practitioners at all levels and in all industry strands about their career stories, to:

• Document diverse pathways through the industry
• Illustrate different roles and transitions between them
• Create relatable examples for those entering or progressing in construction

Time commitment: One 45-60 minute interview

Your input will help create valuable guidance for those entering and progressing through construction careers. The resulting framework will also assist employers in developing role descriptions and career development pathways.

Find out more information here.

To be part of the project, please contact: 

Kathryn Davies

Kathryn.davies@canterbury.ac.nz

021 809 312

Pamela Bell

pamela@nziob.org.nz

021 972 635

4 December 2024

Construction Career Pathways project update

As the end of the year approaches we wanted to provide an update on where the project is up to and what's next. 

Progress so far:

• Project framework established
• Literature review underway
• Ethics approval in process
• Initial stakeholder engagement begun

Next Steps:

• Interviews with subject matter experts
• Interviews to collect career journey stories
• Develop draft framework
• Industry consultation phases planned for mid-2025

We're seeking industry professionals* to:

• Share career journey experiences
• Review draft frameworks
• Provide feedback during consultation phases

*We would like to hear from people across the sector particularly those with a strong BIM or digital component to their roles.

If you are interested in learning more, participating, receiving updates, or sharing your own career pathway story with us please contact us at info@nziob.org.nz

Download our one-page update below:

July 2024

Announcing the Construction Career Pathways project

The Institute is pleased to announce that it is undertaking a Construction Career Pathways Project (Pathways Project). This is in the early stages of establishment and more information will be shared as it is developed.

This is an early call for members who may be aligned with Career Pathway work to please get in touch with us. 

The goal of the Pathways Project is to establish an agreed and centralised framework with a clear definition of roles, related competencies, and the career pathways between them. The intended Pathways Project outcome is a ‘Skills Framework / Careers Pathway’ output available digitally, similar to the ‘Skills Framework for Built Environment’ document created by Skills Singapore. You can view the precedent document here. 

The aim is to create documentation to make the skills, training and career pathways clear to all those in the industry – with a particular focus on those entering the industry, whether from education or from other careers. This guidance will similarly assist those already in the industry to make informed decisions about their career choices and pathways.

It will also be helpful for employers, particularly in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), in providing a consistent template for creating role descriptions and understanding the range of roles across the industry. A key focus area of the research will be looking at how newer areas such as digital construction and engineering integrate into the framework and pathways.

The project will be project managed by the NZ Institute of Building and will be run in collaboration with and with funding from the Building and Construction Training Fund (BCTF) and the University of Canterbury’s Building Innovation Partnership (BIP) research programme (funded through the Science Partnership programme by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE)).

Can you contribute?

We are on the lookout for anyone with expertise in the career pathways space along with subject matter experts across the commercial construction industry.

We will make some approaches directly but if you are interested then get in touch with us at info@nziob.org.nz