“These jobs would offer work which would go on for long enough to allow us to recruit and train apprentices for the full term of their training,” he said.

“We hope that when these contracts are awarded, local construction companies can at least be given a share of the work.”

Dundee has suffered a skills shortage for some time because of a lack of opportunities for would-be apprentices.

Pupils who join pre-apprenticeship programmes at Dundee College have been able to gain guaranteed apprenticeships, and those placed in apprenticeship training by construction trade employers can look forward to a secure period of learning on the job.

But school leavers wanting to learn a trade can struggle because they can’t find an employer able to give them training.

The problem is that there aren’t enough building contracts being awarded over a sufficiently long period for employers to give apprentices a full period of training.

Mr Connaghan identified the difficulty a year ago. He said his firm, Foreman Construction, had been fortunate to grab a significant share of the Ardler redevelopment project in Dundee.

At up to five years, the project is long enough to allow the firm to recruit and train more than 40 apprentices.

Most building projects in the city last only a year or two, however.

One suggested solution is for building firms to form partnerships and offer apprentice training in instalments — so that a trainee joiner might spend his first year with one firm and his second with another, for example.

Mr Connaghan, however, believes firms would be reluctant to release good apprentices to competitors.

But another solution lies with the £80 million PPP scheme about to transform Dundee’s schools, he said.

Ageing schools across the city are to be refurbished to make them fit for the next century, and the work will represent the biggest series of construction projects the city has seen for many years.

Mr Connaghan said, “This work will go on for years and will be long enough for apprentices to get full training — just what the trade has been calling for.

“I understand there are rules for the way PPP projects are awarded and I’d think the whole package would be too big for one Dundee building firm.

“I would hope that if a national firm or firms are brought in, they would take on a local company as a partner, or would see that local firms are sub-contracted some of the work.

“I also wonder if it might be possible for local building firms to form a consortium so that they might be given some of the work. It would make a major difference to the Dundee building trade and for apprenticeship training for local firms to be involved in the PPP project.”

A spokesman for Dundee City Council said, “A progress report on the PPP project will go to the education committee in due course.”

It is understood the council is bound by rules requiring that tenders be advertised throughout Europe.