Joe Ravueta served 12 years in the Army, starting off in The Black Watch Regiment, before transferring to 17 Port & Maritime Regiment RLC, working as a Port Operator.

A typical day for Joe would involve loading containers to the ships with different types of MHE and also lashing, slinger banksman and crane operator.
Joe feels ‘integrity’ best describes his skills learnt during his military career: completing the task to the best of your ability, this shows who you are when you are writing your CV. If you do your job well, more opportunities will become available.

Joe secured his role as Land Surveyor/Site Engineer through the BuildForce programme and their connections with Alliance partner, Civil Engineering Contractors Association (CECA) who further connected him to one of their member’s Fox Ownby Ltd and after a successful interview, Joe quickly secured employment.

Joe’s main lesson learnt from his transition to civvie street was to remain focussed; write a 5 year plan on what you want to achieve and set yourself goals. For him, it was civil engineering so he conducted his research on the required training/qualifications and started college on a one day release to do the BTEC Diploma in Construction, then after a year, he completed his HNC in Civil Engineering at South and City College in Birmingham and finally his Degree with Nottingham Trent University, yet to be completed.

Joe’s main challenges during his transition was having to learn from scratch, learning as he went along without any advice or guidance, thus resulting in numerous mistakes. He adds, with programmes such as BuildForce and Project Recce, the guidance is there, enabling you to connect to industry and companies such as these will ease the transitioning process for others: reading these case studies and the support of the mentoring platform BuildForce offers will be a great boost.

Joes’ main activities in his current role, involve the following:

• Carrying out original ground surveys prior to commencement of contract.
• Carrying out final surveys and preparing as built drawings for measurements and handover of documents.
• Processing surveys and volume calculation using LSS.
• Preparing and suppling information to sub-contractors to enable them to comply with the specification and drawings.
• Providing RAMS (Risk Assessment Method Statement) for works to be carried out. And a typical day on site consists of carrying out survey updates, processing all the findings which are then uploaded to databases using LSS software and AutoCAD Lite.

The transferable skills, Joe has learnt from his military career which he has carried into his site role are planning, time management and effective communication.

Joe’s advice for those leaving the military and considering a career in construction is:
“Construction is one of the industries with the highest projections for new employment opportunities. It’s a great industry to start your career after leaving the Armed Forces and positions ranging from unskilled labourer up to roles that require extensive training, education and skills. If you work hard it will be very rewarding in the end.”

And 3 words to describe the construction industry?
“Demanding, enjoyable and rewarding.”