How it works

All you need to know about Pride in the Job.

Two men in safety jackets and hard hards on new home development site looking at brick level

The Pride in the Job competition cycle takes place over 18 months with judging beginning in July each year. Every site manager managing a site registered for NHBC Buildmark is automatically entered. There are no entry fees or forms.

Quality Award winners are announced in June with Regional Events commencing every September running until the end of November. The Regional Award winners from every region then compete to win the national Supreme Awards in January.

The competition covers England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man and is open to businesses of all sizes. The categories are: small builder, medium builder, multi-storey, high-rise and large builder.

What does winning a Pride in the Job award mean?

We know how much this competition means, whether it’s targeting your first Quality Award or pushing for a Supreme Award. House building is a team effort, but the calibre of the site manager has the most influence on the quality of the completed home.

Winning site managers demonstrate incredible dedication, passion, commitment and leadership to produce homes of exceptional quality. The judges look for that spark of magic that turns a good site manager into a true great.

How you're judged

Rules of the competition (PDF, 0.10mb)

Marking Guidance (PDF, 0.25mb)

Assessment Sheet (PDF, 0.10mb)

Advice from a Supreme Award judge

: Use everything at your disposal to gain more knowledge about the competition, starting off with your NHBC Building Inspector. Engage with them by asking for advice about how you can improve and what other Site Managers in the area are doing. If the Inspection Manager comes out to look at your site accompany them on their inspection and ask them to point out things that are good and what could be improved upon. 
Our assessment sheet is available so you can be your own judge and reflect honestly on your performance.
Contact local winners in your region and ask to visit their site. All previous winners are proud of what they’ve achieved, and some would be happy to take you around their site and give you some tips on what you need to do to increase your chances of winning.
: You need to be completely focused on building the best houses you possibly can, and on becoming a Supreme Award Winner.
It's not a 40-hour-a-week task to become a Supreme Winner. You will need to go above and beyond with a focus on improving quality every single day, sometimes at weekends!
: For a site manager to get to the next level, they need to look at their site and rather than looking at what is acceptable, look to see where things may be improved, to raise the bar again. They should consider and discuss with their Building Inspector what’s happening on other sites in their area to find out if there is anything they can take away and implement on their own sites.
: Judges each travel to hundreds of sites every year and then must whittle them down to a select few in their region. This can be difficult as there are more and more sites out there of a good standard.
They also have to manage expectations - the fact an NHBC judge has shown up to your site isn't an indication that the site has won an award - It can come down to very fine margins.
It’s brilliant that there are more good sites to choose from which hopefully means more satisfied homeowners moving into houses that are built to very high standards. So, whilst it is a challenge, it’s a challenge that we at NHBC are happy to accept.
: Pride in the Job means a lot to the industry as it has driven up the quality of new build houses and homeowner satisfaction. It is a massive accolade for a site manager and some of those that have won have gone on to become Contracts Managers or Construction Directors. The industry really focusses on Pride in the Job and take great pleasure from their company and Site Managers’ successes.
: Pride in the Job has helped to raise standards in the industry in many ways.
Aside from the obvious competitive element that drives Site Managers to up their game, you also get innovative Site Managers that introduce certain practices which move standards and quality on and, over time, are shared, evolve, and become the norm.
It has a filter effect too. Winning Site Managers invariably have an Assistant Site Manager working with them who is being mentored. Those Assistant Site Managers in due course become Site Managers and take with them what they’ve learned from their award-winning mentor. Often, they will try to improve on what they’ve seen, both under their mentor and also on other sites they’ve assisted on.