5th Nov 2025

A military mission where everyone comes out a winner

Following their recent addition to our family of charity partners, we're working with the Forces Employment Charity to strengthen our support for the Armed Forces community

Members of our Charitable Giving Committee, colleagues from our Armed Forces Network and representatives from the Forces Employment Charity (FEC) came together recently to begin exploring what a future joint mission might look like.

Members of the Forces Employment Charity and Sir Robert McAlpine's Charitable Giving CommitteeThe newest of our three official charity partners, the FEC provides life-changing support, jobs and training opportunities for people from the Armed Forces community, as well as support for veterans in the criminal justice system.

Last year, it helped nearly 30,000 clients and worked with companies like ours to place just shy of 15,000 people into employment. The charity which is now the FEC was first founded in 1885, meaning our organisations share almost 300 years of heritage and a deep understanding of our respective sectors. 

The recent joint workshop at our London head office was the first of a number that will be held over the coming months to set out shared objectives.

We entered into a three-year agreement with the FEC in July, reinforcing our commitment to the Armed Forces community, including service leavers, veterans, reservists and their spouses, partners and children.  

The partnership follows the establishment last year of our Armed Forces Network and our recent Defence Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS) Silver Award from the Ministry of Defence. 

FEC join our family of corporate partners alongside Maggie’s and Construction Youth Trust (CYT), and we hope that, as with these charities, we can develop a long-term partnership with the charity to maximise the benefits of our relationship. 

It’s now more than a decade since we first started working with Maggie’s, which provides practical, emotional, and social support to anyone with cancer and their friends and family.  

We're enormously proud to have constructed many of its architecturally significant centres across the UK and, in 2016, we committed to raising £1,000,000 for the charity over 10 years. 

Thanks to the fantastic efforts of our people, we hit our target four years ahead of schedule, reaching the £1 million milestone in April 2022.  

Since then, as well as working with Maggie’s on further centres, we have set ourselves a new target focused on the impact that the money raised by our teams has on the lives of those the charity supports. 

The overarching ambition is to achieve a fundraising target of 100,000 hours of support for those affected by cancer and their families, which equates to £1m of fundraising. 

Our relationship with the CYT stretches even further back, to its founding in the 1960s.  

The Trust works to inspire and enable young people to overcome barriers and follow a career in the construction and built environment sector. Over the years we have worked with the CYT to support thousands of young people, helping to raise their aspirations and creating pathways into employment.  

Most recently we have worked with the Trust and our client British Land to establish Broadgate Future Talent, an innovative, collaborative programme that demonstrates how a major London development can be a powerful engine of social mobility in the local community.  

This exemplar scheme has shown how much more industry partners can achieve by working together, rather than individually, to attract, inspire and support a new generation of diverse young Londoners. 

By the end of Year Two of this five-year programme, we have already reached 359 your people, with 11 apprentices taken on and work placement provided for 29 candidates across the project partners. 

The CYT’s Chief Executive, Carol Lynch, also joined the session to deliver a powerful summary on the impact of our support, and the value of long-term relationships with mutually agreed deliverables and objectives. 

We are hoping for similar success with FEC and look forward to getting our goals agreed so we can start making a real difference to the lives of former service personnel and their families. 

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