Private sector: Construction

Male with cropped dark hair: Numeracy and literacy skills are very important in the construction industry, from the basics of writing reports to doing calculations, measurements and reading drawings.

Male with short dark hair wearing orange hoodie: Plans work on a scale, standard one is 1:100.

So if you measure something off the plans and it was 1 mm, it'll be 100 mm in the house.

Male with cropped dark hair: You've got to be able to do calculations, write reports and work out figures throughout the day.

Male with short dark hair wearing orange hoodie: You end up using a lot of addition, you may not be given a measurement on a plan, you may have to add a lot of measurements up to get an overall measurement.

Male wearing glasses: A typical concrete mix, just for your standard sort of foundations or something like that, would normally be a six and one, so that would be six parts of ballast to one part of cement.

Male with short dark hair wearing orange hoodie: Everything sort of works off a right angle in a house, for it to be square.

Male wearing glasses: A typical staircase would be 42°.

A common roof pitch would be about 30°, but they can go all the way up to 70°, depending on what type of roof it is.

Male wearing glasses: On a building site it is absolutely vital to have decent reading skills.

On a daily basis we are either reading plans, reading specifications, instructions, that type of thing.

Part of my job is to keep clients informed on what's happening on site and throughout the build, and writing letters and emails is an absolutely vital skill to have.

You wanna be able to communicate effectively, and to do that you're gonna have to have all your punctuation and grammar absolutely spot on.

Male with cropped dark hair: If anyone's thinking of getting into the construction industry, having good communication, numeracy and literacy skills is key.