T WILL soon be 10 years since I moved into my house. Looking out at the landscaped area where the local kids play football in the summer, I recall a very different picture involving mud, works vans, a portable building and a long-suffering apprentice bricklayer who bore the brunt of all the jokes.

Living on a building site is an eye-opening experience. The language can be less than fragrant, builder's bum is prevalent, the dust gets everywhere and there's absolutely no chance of a lie-in. It was well over a year before I had any neighbours, so I had only the builders for company and, on one occasion, a bunch of burly firefighters who responded to my 999 call after a gang of youths set fire to a half-built house.

David Nicholson, an apprentice plumber with Mactaggart & Mickel, once harboured ambitions to be a firefighter. Now, the 19-year-old from Old Kilpatrick is plying his trade with the housebuilder at its site at Aidan's Brae in Clarkston, Glasgow.

"When I left school I was too young to apply to the fire service, so I decided to go for a trade," he says. "I sat construction skills tests in plumbing and joinery and got 99% in plumbing.

"The next stage was to apply to companies for an apprenticeship. I sent off 17 and Mactaggart & Mickel took me on. With plumbing, it's a trade that never goes away - you're always going to need plumbers. I'm on a four-year course and coming up to the end of my second year. I also go to Clydebank College once a month. There's more to getting a trade than people think, and once I'm fully qualified I'll have learned everything about plumbing and be Corgi-registered so I can work with gas. Get a trade like plumbing behind you and it's like gold dust."

Meanwhile, one former Mactaggart & Mickel apprentice who has done rather well for himself is Ed Monaghan. He was just 16 when he was taken on as an apprentice painter 28 years ago; today, he's the firm's managing director.

"As a company, we've run our training programme for apprentices for a very long time, but the trick is to keep refining it to the needs of your industry," he says. "We see it as a long-term investment in our business. Construction is on the up, and our company has 10 active sites at the moment. The Scottish government has set our industry a target of 35,000 new homes by 2015, so we need to get people trained if we are to bridge the skills gap."

Mactaggart & Mickel has 36 apprentices learning trades such as plumbing, joinery, roughcasting, painting and bricklaying. Before they join the company, apprentices, with their parents or guardian, are invited to an induction evening where they meet the managers. "If there are any problems with an individual down the line, we then have a relationship there which makes it easier to get things sorted out," says Monaghan.

The company is also one of a number of housebuilders that supports children's charity NCH Scotland's Youthbuild programme, which helps young people from difficult and disadvantaged backgrounds find work in the construction industry.

Apprenticeships, meanwhile, were in the news last week when the Scottish government launched Skills Development Scotland as part of its strategy to create more provision to deliver effective skills development opportunities that meet the needs of employers and employees.

The new organisation is to increase the number of modern apprenticeships for 16 to 19-year-olds by 10% in all construction and engineering-related sectors, and provide an additional 6500 Level 2 modern apprenticeships through reform of the Skillseeker programme. A modern apprenticeship in life sciences will also be introduced.

And in Glasgow, up to 5000 youngsters leaving school in 2009 will be given the opportunity to apply for an apprenticeship in a £30 million Glasgow City Council initiative to assist in the completion of new arenas and infrastructure ahead of the Commonwealth Games in 2014. A total of 2000 construction apprenticeships will be offered, most with the council-owned construction company City Building, which last year received more than 2500 applications for just 77 apprentice positions.

"This level of support for apprenticeships is hugely important for industry and the Scottish economy," says Monaghan. "We want to see people trained well so they can move into secure, permanent jobs."