Costain–RFA jobs initiative: social value and site labour insights for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on New Civil Engineer
30 Second Briefing
Costain has become the first tier one infrastructure contractor to partner with the Rebuilding Futures Alliance (RFA) to create structured employment pathways for care leavers and people with past convictions across its UK project portfolio. The collaboration will channel candidates into roles on major highways, rail and water schemes, backed by RFA’s pre-employment training and wraparound support to meet clients’ social value and Section 106 commitments. For engineers and project managers, this signals more diverse site labour pipelines and potential contractual requirements to evidence inclusive recruitment on large frameworks.
Technical Brief
- Site management may need revised induction, supervision and mentoring processes to integrate RFA recruits effectively.
- Similar alliance models could be replicated by other tier one contractors on multi-year infrastructure frameworks.
Our Take
Costain’s role on Pagabo’s £4.29bn National Framework for Civil Engineering and Infrastructure suggests that any Rebuilding Futures Alliance employment commitments could be scaled across a wide pipeline of UK public works rather than confined to a single project.
With Costain embedded in major London schemes such as HS2’s SCS tunnels and the proposed West London Orbital line, targeted roles for care leavers and people with past convictions are likely to be concentrated in urban transport corridors where labour demand and political scrutiny on social value are both high.
In our infrastructure coverage, Costain appears more frequently than many peers in stories tagged ‘Sustainability’, signalling that the firm is positioning social inclusion initiatives like this alongside carbon and resilience measures as part of its competitive offer on large UK frameworks.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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