Willmott Dixon’s blockchain tech in new digital training for bosses

Image: Dreamstime/Nils Ackermann

Willmott Dixon, Costain and Skanska will lend their digital knowledge to a new scheme that aims to give up to 2,000 construction industry leaders – at least half of them from SMEs – the skills to drive digital transformation in construction.

The CITB-funded scheme involves six projects to train leaders in the skills they need to embed digital practices in their businesses by creating internal digital champions and engaging supply chains.

The training will encourage firms to develop diagnostic tools to identify and assess their existing digital skills, as well as offering will offer teaching materials, modules and mentoring schemes.

The six project leads are: the National Federation of Builders, Willmott Dixon, Setting Out For Construction, Supply Chain School, Leeds Beckett University and the Gloucestershire Construction Training Group.

Willmott Dixon will be using blockchain in its project with a decentralised database called distributed ledger technology (DLT). This results in cost savings by cutting fraud and error.

Over the next three years the Supply Chain School – together with the Tideway alliance and its main contractors, Costain and Skanska – will harness the lessons learned from London’s £3.8bn super sewer to upskill leaders and managers.

Gloucestershire Training Group will help SME leaders identify digital solutions to reduce waste and improve efficiency.

CITB claimed that digital technologies can help save time and improve productivity by enabling onsite employees to go digital, saving hundreds of hours in manual data entry with documents such as timesheets, expenses claims and work records.

Marcus Bennett, CITB future sills and innovation lead, said: “CITB is supporting the construction industry in understanding the potential savings and productivity benefits of digitalisation, as well as embedding digital practice across businesses, especially for smaller firms. Margins are strained and wage costs going up, so it’s vital to make use of technologies that relieve these pressures.

“The CITB research report, ‘Unlocking construction’s digital future: A skills plan for Industry’, has found that technology-specific skills aren’t the problem – the broader skills and competencies at various levels need to be addressed.”

Jeremy Galpin, digital champion and legacy lead for Tideway East, said: “The Downloading of a Digital Mindset programme is an exciting opportunity for us to drive increasing digital maturity across the project as well as share our learning, learn from others and deliver a digital legacy for the industry”.