Bid to beat construction industry skill shortages

Citation

(2001), "Bid to beat construction industry skill shortages", Education + Training, Vol. 43 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2001.00443gab.005

Bid to beat construction industry skill shortages

Bid to beat construction industry skill shortagesKeywords: Construction industry, Skills shortages, Career guidance, Recruitment

One of Britain's largest industries has called for a fair share of the £6 billion annual budget of the Learning and Skills Council in order to prevent future skill shortages. The Construction Industry Training Board has published a workforce-development planning brief to help the council and other agencies to understand the skill needs of the 370,000 recruits needed by construction over the next five years. The planning brief outlines how, until now, financial rather than strategic considerations have been the driving force in determining the provision of young people's education after they leave school. This has led to an over-emphasis on courses that, although they are cost-effective for colleges to run, bear little relation to the demand for skills in their catchment areas.

The Construction Industry Training Board calls for a new partnership approach to introduce higher-level workforce development planning considerations into the provision and funding of courses. The board believes that some 500,000 existing workers will need to be qualified in the next few years through on-site assessment and training. Although the on-site assessment and training programme has been successful, especially in qualifying and improving the skills of the existing workforce and adult entrants, it needs more support from the Learning and Skills Council to extend the programme to further education colleges and private training providers.

The construction industry needs to recruit 64,000 people each year simply to maintain the current workforce – and another 10,000 are needed to keep up with forecast demand. The Construction Industry Training Board is looking for support to build an enhanced programme of careers advice, together with new curriculum materials to support job-related study for young people post-16. The Construction Industry Training Board also wants to find new types of training opportunities for some 400,000 self-employed contractors who work in construction. Over the past 11 years, the board has set up 122 curriculum centres and is calling for more funds to build on their success. Hugh Try, Construction Industry Training Board chairman, commented: "We have great hopes that the Learning and Skills Council will take a fresh strategic approach to training at both a national and regional level. We are offering the information, ideas and insight it needs to help our industry to recruit and train hundreds of thousands of people. We must develop our partnership with the Learning and Skills Council effectively, or in a few years' time, not only the construction industry, but the UK economy as a whole, will suffer terribly from the results of severe skill shortages."