Balfour Beatty picked up the 'Inspiring Futures' prize at the Chamber's Northern Star Business Awards.
Balfour Beatty is a leading international infrastructure group which finances, develops, builds and maintains innovative and efficient infrastructure which underpins daily life, supports communities and enables economic growth.
It is currently delivering the renovation of Union Terrace Gardens; is responsible for the ongoing operations and maintenance of the AWPR; and is constructing the new SSEN Power substation in Peterhead.
Balfour Beatty is a patron of The 5% Club, a movement founded by its CEO in 2014, which is committed to addressing youth unemployment through a confederation of like-minded businesses by ensuring that at any one time 5% of their workforce are in earn and learn positions.
It supports a number of education providers in the North-east of Scotland through delivering sector awareness sessions, developing bespoke education activities and supporting work placements with the aim of encouraging young people to consider future careers within the construction and engineering sector.
Through virtual work experience programmes and virtual events Balfour Beatty has engaged with a broad range of schools and a diverse range of pupils across the North-east.
Of these, 36% of pupils were girls and 64% boys; 41% of pupils completing programmes attended schools predominantly within areas of deprivation and 82% of the pupils were from Aberdeen city schools and 18% from Aberdeenshire.
As well as virtual sessions for schools the group developed a new virtual work experience model which was offered to all secondary schools in the region. The programme was fully accredited by the Engineering Development Trust and pupils who completed the five-week programmes were eligible for industry recognised silver Industrial Cadet certificates.
At the start of the first lockdown Balfour Beatty promoted the Scape Learning in Lockdown programme, the first collaborative virtual work experience approach delivered by the construction industry in the UK and supported and funded four pupils in a model creating challenge. The group also created and shared free education resources containing construction activities for primary and secondary schools.