News & Press — Celebrating National Apprenticeship Week Australia (NAWA) at Alchemy
Everyone has to start somewhere and there’s no better way to earn your stripes on a construction site than getting your hands dirty and learning on the job as an apprentice.
National Apprenticeship Week Australia 2026 – a week long, nationwide celebration that recognises the important role apprentices and trainees play across Australia’s industries, gave us the perfect excuse to shine a spotlight on the people who represent the future of the construction industry – our apprentices and cadets.
For us, construction is more than just the bricks and mortar, it’s about people, mentorship and creating career pathways that last a life-time.
This year, we celebrated by talking training, sharing apprentice stories and finishing the week the best way we know how – with a good old Aussie sausage sizzle.
We kicked off the week by catching up with our Construction Manager, Paul Mrocki, who’s currently working on the Big Housing Build Project. For Paul, training apprentices and cadets on live sites isn’t just part of the job, it’s one of the most rewarding parts. Click on the video below to see what he had to say.
We also spoke with Matthew Tofinga, an electrical apprentice with BNE Electrical Solutions on the Big Housing Build project and heard, first hand, his perspective as a 3rd year electrical apprentice. We learned about some of the biggest challenges he’s faced and what it’s been like working alongside the Alchemy team. Check out his chat with us in the video below.
Of course, no week of celebrations is complete without a good feed! To wrap up National Apprenticeship Week 2026, we held sausage sizzles across several of our sites which gave us a chance to pause, catch up and celebrate the contribution of our apprentices, cadets and broader project teams.
Our Managing Director, Andrew La Rocca, even stepped away from the office, whacked on an Alchemy apron and jumped behind the BBQ to serve the team himself. Let’s just say he handled the tongs like a seasoned pro.
National Apprenticeship Week 2026 provided us with a great reminder: while we’re proud of the work that we do in communities around Victoria, we’re just as proud of the people we’re helping develop along the way.