The construction industry’s growing skills shortage is a critical issue says Boles

The construction industry’s growing skills shortage is a critical issue, but while government can provide support, employers must take the lead in solving the problem, explains Construction Minister Nick Boles.

Antony Oliver
19 February 2015

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As the UK economy continues to drive forward out of recession, it is fair to say that most sectors of industry are experiencing skills shortages to a greater or lesser extent.

According to Construction Minister Nick Boles, whose portfolio also sees him as the government’s Skills Minister at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Department for Education, only construction and engineering serve him with a “constant litany of how problematic the skills shortage is”.

This article is part of a series tackling the on-going issue of skills and resources in the construction industry to be found in the latest KPMG Focus on Infrastructure, Building & Construction digital magazine. To download the app click here.

Boles’ observation served to highlight just how critical the construction skills shortage has become, and came during a recent KPMG and London Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) seminar to launch the jointly authored “Skills to Build” report

This report highlighted that by April 2015 over 600,000 workers will be needed on site to deliver major projects currently in planning, and said that a 51% increase in training provision would be required to meet demand for skilled labour between 2014 and 2017 – and plug a gap of nearly 15,000 people. KPMG has warned of project delays because of lack of labour.

“This is of course the absolutely critical problem,” said Boles, referring to the on-going shortage of resource affecting the construction industry’s ability to deliver a growing pipeline of activity.

“The argument [from industry] is ‘all of our most skilled employees are in their late fifties/early sixties’,” he added. “Do the maths. They’re not going to be here forever. Who’s going to do this stuff in ten years’ time?”

And government, said Boles, was very aware of the challenge, not least given the cross party consensus that has now built behind the notion that investment in infrastructure more than pays back in terms of economic growth.

As such he welcomed the KPMG/LCCI report – “even those couple of points that are challenging to government policy” – as a timely intervention that should galvanise action.

“There are some [recommendations in the report] where I hope that you feel that the government policy is already anticipating some of the things that need to be done,” he said.

“I think we all accept that the current situation in schools is not acceptable. There are relatively few schools that do an excellent job, many that just sort of tick a box and there are some, I fear, who do even less than that.” Nick Boles MP, constuction minister.

But he added: “It should be employers who should be in the driving seat, employers who are determining what are the skills, what are the standards that are relevant to their contemporary industry”. If the industry is to remain at the competitive cutting edge of a fast moving global business it cannot wait for government to lead

Boles stressed government’s key role in ensuring that public procurement both drove and enabled the industry to invest in apprenticeships and training and he was clear that ultimately employers bore the bulk of responsibility for investing in the skills they need for the future.

Industry, he insisted, had to be involved in setting the standards that young people will be learning in colleges and in apprenticeships or they would become irrelevant.

“So employer ownership of skills, to use the jargon, is critical and I’m delighted that the industry has already started work on some of these new trailblazer standards,” he said. “I hope you’re going to do more, I hope that you are going to completely revolutionise the way in which apprenticeships are delivered, so that what you are investing in is the set of skills that will be useful to you not just in five years time, but in 35 years time.”

That said, Boles pointed out that government did have a key role to play in setting the framework and pointed to exemplars such as the apprentice programme on the Crossrail project as an example of success.

“Crossrail has led the way and I think everyone thought [Crossrail Chairman Terry Morgan] was pretty mad at the time to demand that an apprenticeship was created for every million pounds of contract value,” said Boles.

“But he’s delivered it, and Paul Deighton the Infrastructure Minister and I are actively discussing the possibility of spreading out that approach across the whole of the infrastructure activity of the UK,” he added. “And I would even ask once we’ve done that, why don’t we look at the rest of government, why should it only apply to infrastructure?”

Boles also said that there was work that government could do to boost the current level and standard of careers advice in schools, which, according to anecdotal evidence, fails to highlight the range of careers available in the construction industry.

“I think we all accept that the current situation in schools is not acceptable,” he said. “There are relatively few schools that do an excellent job, many that just sort of tick a box and there are some, I fear, who do even less than that.”

This article is part of a series tackling the on-going issue of skills and resources in the construction industry to be found in the latest KPMG Focus on Infrastructure, Building & Construction digital magazine. To download the app click here.