Fusion21 social value data: workforce and skills insights for UK project teams
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Fusion21’s latest social value data show 707 people secured employment through its construction and maintenance frameworks in 2025-26, up 44.9% from 488 the previous year, including 116 apprentices across construction, engineering, utilities, surveying and specialist trades. Local resident hires on framework projects rose from 96 to 264 (175% increase), while jobs for previously unemployed people jumped from 41 to 161 (292% rise). Roles created span bricklayers, traffic marshalls, site managers, electricians, quantity surveyors, scaffolders, lift engineer apprentices and trainee asbestos surveyors, strengthening site and technical capacity.
Technical Brief
- Framework coverage spans housing, local authority, education, NHS and blue light infrastructure clients.
- Apprenticeship pathways cover construction, engineering, utilities, surveying and specialist trades, not just general labour.
- Data are reported on an annual framework-year basis, here 2025–2026 versus 2024–2025.
- Local-resident and previously unemployed hires are tracked as separate metrics, enabling targeted social value KPIs.
Our Take
Fusion21’s social value outcomes in the United Kingdom sit alongside its £85m national grounds maintenance framework now out to bid (23 January 2026), signalling that bidders on its frameworks are likely to face increasingly explicit employment and apprenticeship targets as part of award criteria.
Across the 916 Infrastructure stories in our coverage, relatively few quantify local resident and previously unemployed jobs as precisely as Fusion21 does, which is likely to give the organisation an advantage when evidencing compliance with UK public‑sector social value and levelling‑up requirements on future 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.
