Andrew Wolstenholme OBE, co-chair of the Construction Leadership Council, on the Farmer review.
At the end of last year the government asked the Construction Leadership Council to identify actions to reduce the industry’s structural vulnerability to skills shortages, taking account of the Council’s wider work including that on business models and offsite housing.
The Council welcomed this invitation. Our task is to be ministers’ go-to source of senior industry advice on the sector’s major issues, and there is no more important question for construction than this one.
This review has been carried out for the Council by Mark Farmer, CEO of Cast Consultancy, and I am very pleased to present his report. It does not, however, make for comfortable reading. It is not the first report to set out the shortcomings of the sector’s labour model, and prevailing business model, though few have done so in such a cogent and compelling way.
What is new, though, is the force of the conclusion that – given workforce attrition exacerbated by an ageing workforce – we simply cannot go on as we are. The report focuses in particular on housing, reflecting the original commission.
In fact, while different parts of construction have different features, this issue is to be found throughout the sector. In infrastructure and commercial property the skills challenges arising from previous underinvestment are similarly pressing, and the imperative to act similarly strong.
Here too we find the survivalist business model, the absence of alignment between industry and client interests, and of the incentives and means to invest, that Mark recognises are the heart of the problem. Put simply, much of the industry does not make enough money, or, where money is being made, feel enough confidence it will stay profitable into the future.
The consequence is underinvestment in training and development, in innovation, in raising productivity. The challenge the report sets us is to do things differently – to reduce the reliance on building in the same way that we have for decades if not centuries, with its heavy demand for on-site labour.
We will not have the labour force to deliver what the country needs by working in those ways, and those ways will not create enough added value for clients or suppliers to allow construction firms to prosper, and make those investment in our people and performance.
As the report says, this is a challenge for all – the industry, its clients, and government. Its recommendations are focused on finding and unlocking the drivers of change, including action to support predictability of demand, and on leadership to own the change. That is in part a role for the Leadership Council and its workstreams, though it will depend on the industry and its clients joining the journey. The recommendations are well framed in recognising other work currently taking place.
In July the government announced it will review the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB). That is a key organisation for this agenda, and the Council would like the review to be radical – to be the force for the changed industry that we need requires a changed organisation, with a remit centred on developing the skills of the future, and efficient and effective delivery and use of its resources.
Since we were asked to carry out this work the country has voted to leave the EU. This has highlighted again the growing reliance of some trades in some regions on migrant labour, and only un1derlined further, if that were necessary, the imperative to make our industry one that trains and develops the people we need.
Last, I should like to record the Council’s gratitude to Mark Farmer and the colleagues who have supported him. We are enormously grateful for all the time and hard work and insight he has brought to the task. Perhaps the best thanks we as an industry could give him would be to make this report the moment when the recognition that we cannot go on as we are reached its tipping point.
I have been involved in the construction Industry for 34 years this year, and we have seen a very sudden decline in apprentices, which in my opinion is down to 2 things, the first is over zealous safety compliance with CSCS cards and H&S tests The second is that NVQ qualifications are completely valueless, they are at best poor, and so easily gained they have no value whatsoever.
The Industry is hard, out in all weathers, there are no schemes which help people who are wiling to work hard, a little bit of help when needed unlike agriculture farmers get paid to do nothing. Self employed construction workers get nothing, if they don’t work they don’t get paid. you only have to look at the average age of the construction worker now, and it is rising, which is very bad news indeed. So how do we fix it….
1 Make it easier to get young people involved in the industry.
2 Pay them a skill related level of pay, to keep them in the industry.
3 Become more innovative, the methods we still use have not changed in 30 years, better use of technology throughout the industry, we have it, lets use it.
Good not before time the C.I.T.B. was looked in to in some depth.
Well done.
In Ireland we are facing a similar future,as a former carpenter who left the profession and entered into higher education, i can see that with out providing a future for people in the construction sector it is impossible to create a sustainable workforce.Nobody wants to work in an industry that cant provide certainty into the future. And as said previously it is a hard place to work,with little or no thanks at the end of it
Sadly, the CITB review will not be aimed at improving its appalling record on training for the construction industry. Farmer is clear, higher levies and creating barriers to rebates, making them even further out of reach to SME’s, who contribute most to the CITB but gain least, and more cash diverted to companies wishing to reduce quality and dumb down the industry to allow them to pay lower wages.