David Bucknall has had enough of defeatist talk about a lack of new talent out there. So much so he’s teamed up with us to search for great potential construction consultants. This week we launch the Protégé 2007 competition - click here to enter the official site. The prize? A job with Bucknall Austin, global career prospects and £3,000 cash.

QS News has teamed up with Bucknall Austin this week to launch a nationwide hunt for the sharpest student talent in the country.

Protégé 2007 will put budding undergraduates from construction and non-construction courses through a series of technical, business and interpersonal tests early next year in order to see who best matches the needs of current employers. The winner will secure a job with Bucknall Austin, a cash prize of £3,000 and the opportunity to work across the globe.

The judging panel for the Protégé 2007 will be headed by David Bucknall, chairman and founder of the firm. During his long career Bucknall has been at the forefront of his profession promoting quantity surveying and best practice across the industry. He was the winner of QS Champion of the Year at the QS Awards in 2005.

Bucknall said nurturing and developing talent was vital for QS, project management and building surveying firms. “Bucknall Austin always needs well-motivated, excellent new blood coming through – just like a football club needs a good development academy,” he added.

Other judges for the competition will include ex-CBI boss and one of UK business’ most famous faces Sir Digby Jones. The charismatic Midlander joined Bucknall Austin as an adviser this year.

The competition, which this week received support from the RICS, will be a great platform to nurture new talent in the industry and will explain just what the job of a construction graduate entails to those students who are not studying construction as a first degree.

Bucknall Austin recruitment manager Stephen Reilly said the firm was looking to attract candidates with personality, enthusiasm, energy and a sense of fun

He said: “We are looking for more than just good academic qualifications. We are looking for well-rounded people with drive and good interpersonal skills. We are a client facing consultancy so our people have to be able to cultivate relationships as well as being technically excellent.”

Reilly added that the firm, which has just been named no 23 in a list of Britain’s Top Employers 2007 in joint research by the Guardian and the Corporate Research Foundation, was keen to nurture “well rounded professions wanting to develop their career with a professional construction consultancy”.

How the competition will work

The competition is open to both cognate and non-cognate undergraduates studying in their final years and to cognate students in their second years looking for a year out placement.

After registering in the next two and a half months the students will undertake their first distance challenge, a questionnaire to assess their suitability for the competition.

This will whittle the numbers entering to the final competing candidates, who will then start the comprehensive and rigorous assessment process.

There will be a further distance-learning test set, followed by a live challenge day that will see the candidates working in teams on business-related tests set by Bucknall Austin. The candidates will be set a live networking test. Then the final shortlist will face an interview panel chaired by David Bucknall including Sir Digby Jones and other major industry figures. We will present the Protégé 2007 Awards to the winners next spring.

The ex-CBI boss, and one of UK business’ most famous faces, joined Bucknall Austin as an adviser this year

Bucknall’s vision

Throughout my career I have been passionate about getting good, well-motivated people into the industry and particularly the QS profession.

From the mid-60s onwards, I realised that the experienced people in the profession have a big responsibility in this. They have got to act as role-models, encourage and in some cases inspire people to join our profession and not others. Too often in recent years, however, the attitude has been negative “we can’t seem to attract the right people” or “it’s not like it was in the old days/my day”.

I have sat on advisory panels of universities providing construction and QS courses. I therefore recognise the real difficulties that they have in balancing government funding and outputs, together with the different accreditation requirements of professional bodies.

Bucknall Austin always needs well-motivated, excellent new blood coming through – just like a football club needs a good development academy.

We know it is a struggle to balance the time needed for bringing these people on, with satisfying customers and generating new business, but we are prioritising this and trying to set the benchmark as “the all-round best employer in the sector”.

With the Protégé, we can show our positive commitment to creating an exciting career path for committed and good people.

Source

QS News

Postscript

To find out more, go to www.protege2007.co.uk for further information