Month in numbers

15

The number of years it could take before skills such as dry stone walling, earth walling and thatching become extinct. The shortage of these skills in parts of the country are so serious that the National Heritage Training Group (NHTG) says that Britain’s listed and historic buildings are under serious threat. It says the industry needs to recruit an additional 6,500 people in the next year to meet the immediate demand.

As a result, the NHTG is campaigning to encourage more people to join this sector. It is developing a Skills Action Plan with industry and education providers in an attempt to secure sufficient funding for a brand-new NVQ Level 3 in heritage conservation and adult apprenticeships.

32

The percentage of construction companies who failed utterly to provide any health and safety training to employees over the past year, according to a recent survey. Many companies didn’t see any particular health risks in things like heavy lifting and exposure to chemicals, and only 2% conceded that site noise could cause hearing loss.

Despite this, they think they’re doing great – 80% of those polled by the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) believe they’re doing enough to address health and safety.

Meanwhile, it seems government, the biggest construction client, may be stoking this complacency. A Construction Confederation survey found that only 48% of major contractors felt that government took health and safety seriously when awarding contracts.

40

This is the percentage hike in manpower you will need on projects just to get the job done if the UK loses its right to opt out of the Working Time Directive (WTD).

This rather worrying statistic comes courtesy of the Construction Confederation, who came up with the estimate to advise the DTI and Treasury. The government departments are preparing to head out to Brussels soon to thrash out a compromise on a potential new European law that would end the opt-out.

The WTD limits workers to a 48-hour week. The Confederation believes the 40% productivity plunge would happen even if the limit were 55 hours a week. And even if you assume a conservative 20% reduction in output, and not 40%, a 55-hour week could reduce UK GDP in construction by £18.6bn, it says.

45

The rather poor score this year, in percentage terms, of project cost predictability in the housing sector – it is poor because last year it was 60%.

This one result is an example of how we’re not getting better on cost and time overruns, according to this year’s annual Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), released by Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment (CEBE). The new KPIs show that on cost and time standards have either remained stagnant or declined. However, we’re doing better on client satisfaction, time predictability, profitability, productivity and safety, so that’s quite good, then.

And remember demonstration projects? Well, this year’s crop of stats showed that they’ve trounced the general industry in all sorts of ways. Productivity was found to be 63% better, for instance. Nice going.

45m

The amount in pounds sterling that Multiplex will lose for building the new Wembley stadium.

The expected loss is more than double the £21m the Roberts family, which holds a major stake in the company, had agreed to cover. A spokesman added that productivity levels were not being achieved and that an action plan had been implemented to address problems.

The completion date has been pushed back by three months to March 2006, and, to heap even more misery on poor old Multiplex, subcontractors are said to be seeking £20m compensation following disruptions on the project last year. Despite all the snags, the company, who is the main contractor on the stadium, insists it will be ready in time for next year’s FA cup final.