A young female bricklayer has said she feels she has made her late sister proud in becoming one of the army of construction professionals who helped raise up the Olympic Village.
23-year-old Kerri Chambers, from Woodford Green, North East London, told The Mirror newspaper that she didn’t know what to do when she left school. When she lost her sister later on that same year, however, it inspired her to find a good career that would have made her sister proud.
Having seen her father forge a successful career as a builder, Kerri realised that there were significant options for women in the trade.
“I decided bricklaying was what I wanted to do,” she told the paper. “So I enrolled at college. It took six months of searching [after my two-year course] but eventually I signed with an agency that linked me up with the London 2012 Women into Construction project.”
She was on site at the Olympic Village within four weeks and, despite being only five foot one, was soon lifting and laying the blocks that became the iconic Olympic structures.
Kerri, who was the only female finalist in the bricklaying section of the recent SkillBuild 2012 competition, said, “At first I was a novelty but now everyone just gets on with the job. I’m just one of the team.
“There is a great sense of satisfaction building things. My dream now is to build my own house.”