A career in the construction industry

A career in the construction industry can provide you with competitive pay and the opportunity to practise a skilled trade. One such trade is mason work, a traditional method of building structures that incorporates manual preparations and precision work. To pursue a career in mason work, it is important to know what the duties and scope of the job are. In this article, we explain what is mason work, examine the various types of mason work, discuss the skills needed for this trade and look at how much masons can expect to earn.Mason work, or masonry, is a construction trade that entails building structures out of component parts made of various materials, such as brick or stone. Practitioners of masonry, known as masons, are manual labourers who lay these components together and usually bind them with a substance such as mortar, a paste made with a mixture of cement, lime, sand and water that hardens when dried. Masonry involves skilled labour, as most forms of mason work involve laying individual components in precise arrangements and are thus resistant to mechanisation.Sun-dried: sun-dried bricks are slabs of clay left to dry and harden in the sun. Burnt clay: also made of clay, these bricks are fired and hardened in a kiln.Concrete: concrete bricks contain eponymous concrete, plus components such as sand and cement.Sand-lime: also known as calcium silicate bricks, sand-lime bricks contain sand, lime, water and often pigment. Engineering: these bricks, often used in civil engineering.