A region-by-region approach is the best way to tackle the construction industry’s skills shortage, a leading procurement body has said.
According to Scape chief executive Mark Robinson, the task of mapping skills to regional needs has been made easier by last week’s publication of the national infrastructure pipeline, which provides real-time updates on 780 planned private and public sector projects.
Scape spent the past year talking to combined and local authorities about their “region’s most pressing built-environment needs”, he told Construction News.
On Monday (21 July), it published the results of those discussions in a report, A Year of Change: Public Good, Public Building – What the Nation Needs Now.
“Something that came over loud and clear [from the discussions] was that development in each region requires vastly different skills, from sustainability expertise to building-safety knowledge,” Robinson said.
Scape found that major construction works in Wales, for instance, tend to be focused on green energy, such as the installation of solar panels at Cardiff Airport. Meanwhile, in the East Midlands and Central South regions (covering cities such as Portsmouth and Southampton), the focus is more on transport infrastructure.
“Being able to map those skills against the national pipeline would help identify regional gaps ahead of time and ensure the right team is in place at the right time,” Robinson said.
“Not only will this facilitate more efficient and cost-effective delivery at a national level, it will also help industry and local authorities nurture new talent – something that we heard can be difficult with a lack of pipeline visibility.”
Scape’s report also calls for better communication between local authorities and central government via liaison personnel, to reflect local priorities in national decisions around policies and funding.
“Skills-mapping on this scale will require close and consistent communication between central and local governments,” Robinson said.
The report further emphasises the importance of public-private collaboration to successful construction project delivery.
Scape found that many of the technical skills needed to push ahead with building vital infrastructure “sit within the private sector”.
“Early onboarding of private partners [on construction projects] will help here,” the report suggests.
Successful collaboration between public and private organisations, it adds, “results in skills exchange, maximised efficiencies and alleviated risk for the public sector”.
In addition, earlier collaboration would lead to longer-term knowledge sharing between private and public sector partners, and allow private organisations to embed themselves in local communities at an earlier stage.
Construction has faced recruitment difficulties for years, with recent estimates suggesting the industry will need nearly 50,000 extra workers every year for the next four years to meet growing demand.
That need is set to rise as the sector gears up to meet the government target for 1.5 million homes to be built during the current five-year parliamentary term.
A spokesperson for the UK government acknowledged that underinvestment in skills has “created a dire shortage of construction workers”.
“Through our Plan for Change we have taken decisive action to build up essential skills in the construction industry and are providing £600m of funding to create up to 60,000 more engineers, bricklayers, electricians, and joiners by 2029 to tackle skills shortages,” they added.
“We will pull every lever at government’s disposal to deliver on the commitment which includes building a diverse workforce fit for the future and ending reliance on overseas labour.”
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Joshua Stein