The cherry pickers

South London-based contracting firm Killby & Gayford took on five third-year construction management students last year from Oxford Brookes University. That is approximately 20% of the class, says Albert McIlveen, senior lecturer at Oxford Brookes, and represents the largest single slice of the cohort he's seen in 10 years in the job. Killby & Gayford took on the five in a bid to avoid the widely feared graduate drought.

McIlveen admits he was unhappy at first about so many graduates going to one contractor for the year-long placement. For one thing, it depleted the reserves of placeable third years, and demand for undergraduates is very high. For another, it put a lot of strain on Killby & Gayford to supervise and look after them properly. But McIlveen says he is "more than happy" with the 20/21-year-olds' progress.

So could this signal a sharpening of competition for the hearts and minds of the cream of the graduate crop? Chris Chivers, managing director of Killby & Gayford, thinks it does. Since there is no system to feed students to mid-sized companies like his, Chivers says they have to make an extra effort.

"How will they know we're here otherwise?" he asks. "In the same way as we market to clients we should be marketing ourselves to potential employees."

Like a lot of companies, Killby & Gayford had realised construction was failing to attract graduates. One day, Chivers was trawling the UCAS website for universities for his daughter when it struck him that Killby & Gayford ought to be searching in the same way for universities that might meet their needs for graduates. So he wrote to a number of universities announcing opportunities for year-out placements and for graduates. Oxford Brookes was the only proactive response.

In February 2001 Chivers and his colleague Roger Poulton went to the university and interviewed 10 students - nearly half the class. He treated it as a serious diplomatic mission. Killby & Gayford called the five selected students within 48 hours and offered help with relocation costs.

It’s a step back in time to when the industry cultivated its own workforce

"We were selling ourselves as if to a client," explains Chivers. "After all, it's a reciprocal arrangement. We want to buy their time, but we have something to offer besides money."

That "something" is a broad experience. Chivers avoided sticking them in one department for the duration. 'There's no point being just a contract manager if your company's moving into PPP or PFI. We've had them do every aspect of site measurement, snagging and even for some of them a small project on their own. We set out to treat them as adults and not school leavers or cheap labour."

So how does Killby & Gayford hope to recoup its investment? After all, it takes a lot of resources for a company with 60 technical staff to absorb, guide and pay five students over a year. Chivers breaks the potential return down over the short, medium and longer term. In the short term, the students can take on some responsibility, thereby easing the load for the Killby & Gayford team. In the medium term, a year from now, some or all of the by then newly qualified graduates will be offered positions if the workload warrants it, thus guaranteeing an influx of graduates already accustomed to the firm.

The long term gets a bit blurry. Chivers admits there is nothing to stop the five graduates going elsewhere. But he believes there is a greater chance they'll return because a relationship has been established.