In February 2004 the Construction Confederation gave this evidence to a House of Lords Select Sub-Committee: “Assuming that the government’s commitment to capital investment is met, we already require over 80,000 new skilled people in the industry each year. Yet the current skills shortfall already places a limit on construction capacity.” Similarly, the CIOB knows and has reported that the low university recruitment of engineering and construction management students has yet to fully impact the industry.

The CIOB raised this ‘capacity’ issue in the construction press, drawing a vitriolic response from the Construction Confederation, which curiously denied any capacity concerns and said that the construction industry is ready to meet any growing demand that government or other clients can put to us. Is this u-turn and denial of skills shortages supposed to reassure clients that the construction industry is ready to take on anything?

The workload is set to rise again. Government programmes include housing (£3.3bn), schools (£5bn) and a further £4bn for hospital building. £5bn is earmarked for defence and the Network rail budget is £7.5bn per annum. Then there’s Crossrail (£10bn) and who knows what the 2012 Olympic bid may bring? This list is not exhaustive. But we do know that Merseyside is already developing at pace, with skills shortages and tender prices rising sharply.

Why then the headlines ‘Industry giants at war...’ and ‘Trade bodies fight war of words over industry capacity’? The CIOB does not raise these issues to merely gain headlines. We believe there should be a systematic review of the capacity of the industry in line with expected future demand, and strategies put in place to build capacity in order to deliver the growing workload. The Construction Confederation’s ‘head-in-the-sand’ attitude will surely lead to disaster.

The CIOB will not be silenced. We need to continue to hear from members to help us track and monitor weaknesses in our capacity to provide the best possible service to our clients. Please forward any information you may have on capacity to the CIOB Press Office at pressoffice@ciob.org.uk

Source

Construction Manager

Postscript

Michael A Brown is deputy chief executive of the CIOB. Chris Blythe is away this month.