UK Construction and Law
A contractor doubles its apprentice intake to fifty and names where they will work
By Staff Writer | 2 September 2026
Fifty apprentices start this year, twice last year's number, spread across road, rail, energy, water and nuclear work. Quantity surveying is one of the disciplines named, which is where most commercial teams say the shortage bites.
Costain announced on 1 September that it is taking on 50 apprentices in 2026, double last year's intake. The hiring runs across all six of the sectors it works in: road, rail, integrated transport, energy, water, and defence and nuclear energy. The disciplines named are civil engineering, electrical and mechanical engineering, quantity surveying, finance and project management. Programmes run from 12 to 60 months and include degree level routes, with apprentices working as members of project teams while they study.
The announcement is unusual in naming the work rather than the ambition. The apprentices will join the London tunnels section of HS2, delivered by the Skanska Costain Strabag joint venture; strategic water infrastructure under the long term AMP8 frameworks with Southern Water and United Utilities; and utilities upgrades at Sellafield.
The Cumbrian half of it
Those hired for the Sellafield site in west Cumbria will work in engineering, project controls and health and safety on the Infrastructure Delivery Partnership, under which the company is providing critical utilities upgrades on a contract with a minimum term of nine years and a value of up to one billion pounds. The company says the hiring was informed by analysis of where skills gaps have historically existed in that region, and that the intake takes it past a contractual commitment for apprentices to make up 10 per cent of its workforce on that partnership.
A percentage of workforce commitment written into a long term partnership is a contractual obligation like any other. It is measured, it can be missed, and on this contract it has been exceeded.
The industry requires more skilled workers than ever to deliver critical infrastructure for a more prosperous, resilient and decarbonised UK, which makes it a hugely exciting time to enter the sector.
Catherine Duffy, Chief People and Sustainability Officer at Costain
Why fifty is worth reporting
Fifty is a small number against the shortfall the industry reports, and it is one contractor. What makes it worth a practitioner's attention is the composition. Quantity surveying and project controls sit alongside the engineering disciplines in the list, and those are the functions that carry records, notices and measurement on exactly the long duration frameworks named. Most of the delay and disruption claims that reach a tribunal turn on records that a commercial team either kept or did not, and the people who keep them are recruited five years before the dispute.
The announcement does not give some of the figures a reader might want. It does not state the total workforce, so the intake cannot be read as a proportion of it. It does not give a completion or retention rate for previous cohorts. It does not break the 50 down by sector, by region or by discipline, so the number joining the Cumbrian partnership is not stated separately from the rest. Those points are recorded here as unstated rather than estimated.
Apprenticeships are open to anyone aged 16 or over who is not in full time education and is eligible to work in the United Kingdom. The company says details of its 2027 early careers and apprenticeship intake, and how to apply, will follow in November.
A doubled intake is a bet on a pipeline rather than a reaction to one. It will be five years before anyone can say whether the bet was right, and about the same before the first of these fifty is the one asked what the site records show.