The Datum Report

Occupation 5330 · Skilled trades occupations

Construction and building trades supervisors

Half of full-time construction and building trades supervisors in the UK earn more than £45,021 a year, and half earn less.

Construction and building trades supervisors oversee operations and directly supervise and coordinate the activities of workers in construction and building trades.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements, though GCSEs/S grades are advantageous. Entry is typically through an approved apprenticeship programme or college course in conjunction with on-the-job training, leading to a NVQ/SVQ level 2/3 qualification, or through building up work experience supplemented with short courses.

What the work involves

• directly supervises and coordinates the activities of construction and building workers and/or subcontractors
• establishes and monitors work schedules to meet productivity requirements
• liaises with managers and contractors to resolve operational problems
• determines or recommends staffing and other needs to meet productivity requirements
• reports as required to managerial staff on work-related matters

Also called

Builder’s foreman · Construction foreman · Construction supervisor · Maintenance supervisor · Site foreman

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for construction and building trades supervisors, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 9 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions