Apprentice Quantity Surveyor Ciaran puts his career on the right track with Bellway
Publication Date: 12-02-2026 09:00
Apprentice Quantity Surveyor Ciaran puts his career on the right track with Bellway
Ciaran Wilson has put his career on the right track after embarking on a degree apprenticeship with Bellway.
The 23-year-old from Swindon is now in his second year as an apprentice quantity surveyor with the housebuilder after deciding that a law degree was not for him.
Combining study with real-world industry experience, the degree apprenticeship is not only preparing him for a job that he loves but has also improved the quality of his academic work.
He believes the benefits of doing a degree apprenticeship should be more widely recognised – and says that is the path he would have taken after leaving school had he known it was an option.
Instead, he chose to do a law degree at Royal Holloway University and by his second year was already thinking about changing direction.
“I didn’t enjoy it,” he said. “I started asking other people about what they were doing.”
He spoke to a schoolfriend who was doing a degree apprenticeship as a quantity surveyor at a building firm and his friend’s enthusiasm was so evident that it got Ciaran thinking.
“The way he was talking about his job I could see he was interested and engaged with work.”
So Ciaran decided to pursue the same route as his friend and landed a role as an apprentice quantity surveyor with Bellway’s South West division, based in Bristol.
A degree apprenticeship allows the apprentice to study at university one day a week while working for their employer on the other four days. They get a salary and they don’t have to pay tuition fees.
The end result is a degree of the same value as one achieved on a full-time course. Ciaran started his degree apprenticeship with Bellway and the University of Northumbria in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in September 2024 and will finish it in the summer of 2029.
“I didn’t know about apprenticeships before but if I had been shown a degree apprenticeship before I’d have taken it,” said Ciaran.
Part of the reason for that is the opportunity it provides to put the learning from a lecture into practice the very next day.
“I can learn something in a lecture and then see it in reality. I can come to work and say I understand it. It means you get more overall knowledge. My uni work increases my understanding in my job, and my job informs what to write in my uni work. My essays are much stronger, and I feel better about them and have a greater understanding.”
He does most of his lectures online, but there are also in-person sessions on campus every few months.
And by working in industry, he has the benefit of the support and backing of his colleagues at Bellway including Managing Surveyor Kevin Reape and other senior quantity surveyors.
He said: “Everyone in my team is really good and they help me out.”
Kevin takes him through examples of work to show him how it should be done, he is encouraged to present in meetings and gets feedback straight after to help him improve.
Ciaran said: “I feel like you wouldn’t get that from just doing a degree. I feel there needs to be more emphasis that a degree apprenticeship is as valuable as a normal degree.”
He enjoys going out on site, building relationships with contractors, tradespeople and site managers yet he also relishes the office work.
“I enjoy doing spreadsheets and looking at the numbers, but when you get to see what those numbers create and go on site and see it in person, it’s exciting.”
He describes his role as “a mix of a lot of roles - project management, cost control, budget reporting, the financial side and the business relationships.”
He wants to progress in his career and is looking forward to one day taking on responsibility for a complex major project where he can use his whole range of skills.
Ciaran’s family are pleased to see how he is getting on and he is proud to point out developments in his hometown that he and his colleagues have been part of.
He said: “They were excited for me to go to uni in the first place and when I came back, they understood. Now they see the feedback I give and the enjoyment I have in doing my uni work and the difference in me, I think they are pretty happy.”
