Technical skills for youths seeking employment and re-skilling unemployed to support Pnrr’s strategic initiatives

MILAN, December 13, 2021 – Webuild today launched a trade school initiative called Scuola di Mestieri to train a new generation of skilled workers and help them find jobs in the infrastructure sector. The school will make available professional technicians as soon as 2022 to start working on projects under the Italian government’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). The school will train people to become technicians and have them work alongside experienced personnel on construction sites. The aim is to prepare them for steady jobs that are to become available, offering the opportunity of a career, whether it be for young people or the unemployed in Italy.

“We want to contribute to the sector’s recovery and the creation of jobs - in the short and long term - in our country which is why we have launched the Scuola di Mestieri initiative, which is unique in our sector. The school will guarantee specific training for new resources and positions inside the Webuild Group, offering the security of a stable job and clear prospects for a career. To do the projects foreseen under the PNRR, 26,000 specialised workers are needed. And to fill these jobs autonomously and safely, there is no room for improvisation in our sector,” said Pietro Salini, Chief Executive of Webuild. “As leader of the sector, we at Webuild feel the responsibility to contribute to breaching the gap in collaboration with all the players in the system who want to work towards this objective with us, by offering stable and long-lasting job opportunities to young people and those who are unemployed who want to join us in this challenge, learning a new trade and doing it in complete safety.”

The primary goal of the project is to address the demand for skilled labor in the sector by offering professional training to new resources. But it will also be a chance to increase safety and quality in the construction of public works by means of a standardization of skills - in addition to making the most of company know-how to guarantee the conservation and transfer of internal skills.

The Scuola di Mestieri is a national project for young people who have completed their professional studies or secondary school as well as unemployed people who want to retrain and transfer into the sector. It involves a professional programme for a period of training at school and a period of four to six months on the job on projects being developed by Webuild. The resources will be followed individually by senior staff, trained ad hoc so they can receive know-how from the senior staff in an effective and structured way. The training will be completed with the use of simulators that will guarantee maximum safety conditions.

Applications open as of today at this web link for two pilot programmes that are set to begin in February. The focus in on traditional excavation and mechanised excavation at two strategic construction sites for Italy’s recovery: the high-speed railway between Naples and Bari and the high-speed/high-capacity railway between Genoa and Milan, known as the Terzo Valico dei Giovi-Nodo di Genova.

Webuild’s Scuola di Mestieri is part of a wider plan of initiatives known as Next-Gen that the Group is developing in Italy and elsewhere to contribute to youth training and creating jobs in the infrastructure sector. Next-Gen includes among other things, the Alberto Giovannini Prize, collaboration programmes with 18 universities in Italy and abroad, bursaries for women learning STEM skills, as well as research and innovation initiatives such as the UniWeLab at the University of Genoa. The Webuild Group today has 43% of its direct employees under the age of 35.