Shirley Watson is a chartered civil engineer with many years’ experience of consultancy, a Non-Executive Director of the ECITB and a Consultant to Russam GMS. In this piece Shirley shares her thoughts about what could be done to address the skills gap.
Construction output is forecast to increase 5.3% in 2015 and 17.8% by 2018, according to the latest forecasts from the Construction Products Association. The future for construction looks bright. However, one factor that threatens growth is the acute shortage of skilled workers in the industry.
According to a report entitled ‘Skills for Build’, published by KPMG in partnership with the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) last November, about 20% more construction managers, surveyors, electricians and other trades will be needed to meet demand, over the next four years, than were needed from 2010-13.
Construction industry body CITB has suggested firms are struggling to fill more than 62,000 jobs with a shortage of young talent entering the employment market.
Last month, The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) surveyed 75,000 of its members and found that two out of five were turning down business because of the shortage of skilled workers.
So what can be done to address this urgent shortfall of skilled workers?
A range of factors needed to be addressed but greater understanding about career prospects in construction, more publicity about the sector and greater pragmatism would all go a long way towards addressing the skills shortage.
Parents, teachers, children and young adults need to be more informed about the job opportunities in construction, which are well paid, interesting and global. The current lack of knowledge is deterring talent.
The seriousness of this issue was highlighted by a recent report from the CITB entitled, ‘Educating the Educators,’ which surveyed over 800 ‘career influencers’ about their perceptions of construction. 35% of careers advisers said they believed construction is an unattractive career opportunity. 44% of teachers admitted to having offered ill-informed careers advice to students and over 60% of careers advisers in schools offer no information on jobs prospects based on available work.
The findings show there is an urgent need for the industry to work more closely with schools, teachers and careers advisers to change old stereotypes that construction is a hard, dirty manual job for boys.
The industry also needs to better promote itself and make more of its landmark construction projects such as the Channel Tunnel, the Millennium Bridge, The Olympic Park and the Shard and enable careers advisors and teachers to use these projects to educate and excite young people about the opportunities in construction.
Whilst great work is being done by the Professional Institutions, CITB, CIC and the Construction Youth Trust to promote construction, a more co-ordinated approach, supported and financed by Government, and using key social networking and websites, could be even more powerful in terms of targeting school leavers and graduates.
In undertaking research for its recent publication, “A career of choice – Attracting talented young people into house building”, the NHBC found that “While a third of boys and young men (37%) are interested in building and construction, only one in ten girls and young women (11%) are interested, the lowest level of interest of any other job sector included in the study.” So some of this publicity needs to focus on encouraging females and ethnic minorities, who currently are very poorly represented in construction at all levels.
Employers could also do so much at a local level to make construction careers more accessible and attractive. Helping young people into employment should be on every firm’s corporate responsibility agenda. Firms would soon see results from providing work experience placements, “bring your child (or someone else’s) to work for a day” sessions or partnering with local schools and sending in young role models to give talks at schools careers events. These are all simple ideas that firms could deliver to ensure they ‘do their bit’ to help to bridge the skills gap.
One big problem is that many people left construction during the downturn and then didn’t return. Incentives to encourage them to return are needed, which could include refresher and re-skilling courses. Companies also need to ensure good prospects for promotion, personal development and training to attract and retain new recruits.
Another big issue is to tackle is apprenticeships. The Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, blames the shortage of skilled workers in the industry on “a 30-year failure to train apprentices”. In 2013, just 7,280 apprentices completed their training across all trades while Construction Skills, the training body, estimates the industry needs 35,000 new entrants just to stand still – and this figure will grow as the sector continues to recover.
The Government must improve the long term prospects for employers too so they can commit to recruitment and training for all staff and create apprenticeships in the numbers required, with government financial support for these new entrants. The Institution of Civil Engineers’ ‘Manifesto for Infrastructure’ provides the vision needed to make infrastructure investment non-political and for a Government commitment to a long term plan.
The same approach needs to be taken in building new homes to ensure a continuity of workload for house builders and developers. All political parties agree we need more homes built each year for the foreseeable future and building these creates much needed employment. So, let’s find a way round the planning and funding issues that cause our rollercoaster housing sector. What better advert could there be for attracting new entrants to a secure, worthwhile, well paid and fun career than creating new homes and a vibrant community?
In considering our skills shortage, the focus will generally be on recruitment and retention in the industry. However, we often overlook the way in which we use our senior construction professionals within the business. Commonly if they demonstrate an aptitude for management, they tend to move away from design and construction related management into mainstream business management. Such a move can be highly appropriate because they understand the customers, the projects, the business and the staff.
But should we really be allowing our scarce technical resources to take-on roles in areas such as procurement, marketing and business transformation, taking them away from where they could add the most value?
The industry needs to realise there is a wealth of non technical specialists (interim or permanent) available for these roles that could be recruited to support the business managers. These experienced professionals can be plugged into a business for projects, temporary positions or permanent roles and immediately alleviate the pressure.
If companies used interim managers, then their construction professionals would also be free to focus their precious technical skills and experience where they are so needed. In this respect we need to wake up and look around us.
Source: http://www.ukconstructionmedia.co.uk/features/skills/plugging-the-skills-gaps/
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