The government is holding firm to its pledge to deliver 1 million new homes during their parliament. Michael Gove commented that “speed and scale matter”.
The School Rebuilding Programme has targets for rebuilding and renovating 500 schools over a 10-year period yet a recent damning National Audit Office (NAO) report suggests this is the tip of a substantial iceberg. They have identified 64,000 individual school buildings in England. 38% of these are “believed to be past their estimated initial design life”.
Despite lofty yet necessary targets for our built environment, in Spring this year, construction output by volume is estimated to have decreased for the third month in a row, “solely from a decrease in new work”. Private housing new work decreased by 1.7%.
There is a vast amount of construction work ahead, whether new or refurbishment. But where are the people to carry out this work?
Property Reporter has estimated that: “Collectively, the whole construction industry faces an impossible goal of needing to recruit over 950,000 workers by 2030 to meet all of these demands from government”.
So, where is everyone? And how do we encourage them into construction trades with all urgency?
Challenges facing the UK
The problem is investment and people. The Industry Skills Plan for the UK construction sector 2021-2025, set out to address the long-publicised and discussed skills shortages across the breadth of trades in construction. But what tangible progress has been made now that we’re halfway through this timeframe?
It has long been acknowledged that we’re lacking home-grown talent which extends as far as the skills gaps in general labour through to our local authorities, recently acknowledged by the Prime Minister, which is now looking to be addressed through the Planning Skills Delivery Fund.
Through the construction process - from planning to groundwork to sign-off - we’re seeing delays and setbacks due to skills shortages. Ambitions being reset. Targets falling off a cliff.
Even if we are to make a dent in the housing and public building construction numbers laid out in recent years, it would seem we’re some way off of the mark, with little chance of meeting the volume required to bolster our declining infrastructure.
Why not construction?
The current perception that is widely publicised is that our youngest generation of school-leavers has no inclination towards physical trades.
However, recent research has highlighted a digital skills shortage in construction too, covering data construction such as AI and BIM.
Seemingly contradictory to popular opinion?
It would appear the qualifications, the talent, the credentials required in construction are wide-reaching, and we’re short of them all. This has only been intensified by the on-going shortage of non-UK labour.
Current built environment targets outlined in the government Transforming Infrastructure Performance: Roadmap to 2030 policy paper, also include succession planning and workforce resourcing and skills.
Is this enough to rebuild the robustness required in the multitude of construction trades?
Unless the root cause of this shortage, whether that is a deficit of non-UK based labour, a lack of incentive or of awareness for Gen Z of the wealth of careers across our built environment sector, a failure in foresight by the government, or a substantial shortfall in investment, or all of these, how will we truly be able to solve this crisis?
What is it going to take to fill the wealth of opportunities ready and waiting, crying out, to be taken up across this industry?
And if they’re not filled, and filled soon, what will be the impact?
How we see it.
Growth. Innovation. Disruption.
At Door Controls Direct we take pride in our dependability, doing all we can to keep people and facilities safe and secure.
But that doesn’t mean we’re static. It doesn’t mean we’re satisfied with the status quo. Dependability for us, doesn’t mean passive or stagnant.
We’re taking action. We are taking action before we find ourselves with a skills shortage, with the possibility of underdelivering, or becoming complacent, and therefore left behind.
Investing in digital innovation, continuing to diversify our team, upskilling ourselves in practical and traditional ways with a forward focus on technology, including integrating AI into daily workflow - this is how we are growing. This is how we are addressing this wider issue within our own business, the wider issue of skill shortages within construction.
In the 1930s, engineer Allen F. Morgenstern is credited with the now common proverb: “work smarter, not harder”. Smarter in 2023 can mean AI, smart buildings, and of course efficiencies of process but we’re proposing something else. Something that will build robustness and a wealth of adaptability of skillset with our business - hybrid roles. Through our general recruitment processes, for a wide range of roles from marketing, to sales and technical support, we’re innovating.
For years, through necessity or choice, we’ve promoted hybrid working. Through the inevitable ups and downs of the change to the accepted model of working, we have come to see the huge benefits of building adaptability and flexibility into the company model. And now we’re doing this with individual roles.
The disruptive force. The person, the group, the company who leverage all they can to their advantage. By employing a breadth of people, with a range of backgrounds, personalities, and skillsets, layering that with technology, and our existing wealth of industry knowledge, we’re building in a contingency to deal with whatever is coming our way. Staff will be multi-skilled, multi-disciplined, and adaptable to the ever-changing landscape of the wider construction industry.
What next?
Should we now make a prediction on how the mammoth industry-wide construction skillset shortage should be addressed?
There cannot be one way, one method, one approach to tackle the vastness of this issue. A multi-faceted, well-considered amalgamation of systems and techniques will be required to be deployed incredibly swiftly if the government construction and refurbishment targets are to be even got close to the outlined timeframes.
Our solution? Hybridise. Multi-task. Smarter ways forward. Integration of different people and systems. Sexing things up.
Where is everyone? We’re all here, ready and waiting to be taught, to be guided, to do our part. But who’s taking the lead, who is showing the way, communicating the why, the how and the what?
We don’t have to leave it to government to communicate an overarching plan to us all.
Have your say, progress the conversation, learn, educate, and innovate. We can all be part of the solution but it won’t happen by standing on the sidelines.
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