Tag Archives: UK

Housing white paper: little new on skills

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Fixing our broken housing market

The Government’s new Housing White Paper, Fixing our Broken Housing Market, mentions skills 20 times (most of the mentions are on page 41) in a largely underwhelming document over 100 pages long. However, it doesn’t say anything particularly new or radical about skills – though this is perhaps to be expected from a Conservative Government writing about an inherently conservative industry (and house-building is, arguably, the most conservative sector within construction).

It makes a passing mention of Mark Farmer’s review, Modernise or Die, published in October 2016 (read our post), touching on his advocacy of offsite fabrication (read this Construction Index summary, for example), and acknowledges that the industry faces particular challenges in certain regions, such as London and the South East, as Brexit looms. It continues:

“This is an important moment and we should make the most of the opportunity for industry to invest in its workforce, alongside tackling the issues raised by the Farmer Review. The larger companies need to take responsibility for ensuring that they have a sustainable supply chain, working with contractors to address skills requirements.”

Three areas are singled out for Government action. It says it will:

  • Post-16 Skills Plan“change the way the Government supports training in the construction industry” – This will include the conclusion of an ongoing review, chaired by Paul Morrell, of the Construction Industry Training Board’s purpose, functions and operations, with the government looking to “ensure that developers benefitting from public funding use the projects to train the workforce of the future.”
  • “launch a new route into construction in September 2019” – as announced in the Skills Plan produced in July 2016 (blog post), it says it will “streamline the number of courses available and improve quality and employability”
  • “work across Government, with the Construction Leadership Council, to challenge house builders and other construction companies to deliver their part of the bargain.”

The white paper then highlights what can be achieved from investing in training as part of major construction programmes such as Crossrail, to see whether this approach can be applied more broadly in the construction sector, particularly by holding developers and local authorities to account. This is mainly about improving transparency of the end-to-end house building process, and identifying where blockages lie (encouragingly there are three mentions of “transparent data”). This could be an areas where SkillsPlanner’s modelling of supply and demand of construction skills could play a crucial role, as Mark Farmer pointed out last year.

farmer review cover“The increasing importance of data means that such approaches would better enable the business case for investment in training and new ways of delivering by better aligning investment to a demand pipeline. … The culture of ‘data silos’ within the industry needs to be broken as part of the wider societal democratisation of data.”

 

Farmer Review highlights SkillsPlanner opportunity

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farmer review cover

Mark Farmer’s review of the UK construction labour model for the UK’s Construction Leadership Council, starkly titled Modernise or Die (PDF available here), has been published today (read news release). It has been widely reported in both trade press and national newspapers, and somewhat cautiously welcomed by the CLC’s co-chair Andrew Wolstenholme.

We have been awaiting this report for some months, as previous blog posts attest (here and here, for example), and our patience has been rewarded. Farmer’s hard-hitting report prominently highlights the SkillsPlanner opportunity, with an entire page (p.34) devoted to a case study about the project.

Time for action

According to Farmer, Britain’s construction industry faces “inexorable decline” unless radical steps are taken to address its longstanding problems, which include its dysfunctional training model, its lack of innovation and collaboration as well as its non-existent research and development (R&D) culture. He also said the industry needs to be far more joined-up with its clients in how it approaches skills.

With more people leaving the industry each year than joining, the construction workforce is shrinking, placing increasingly severe constraints on its capacity to build housing and infrastructure. Reliance on a fractured supply chain and self-employment also means there is little incentive for contractors to invest in long term training for the labour force. Farmer says:

“… carrying on as we are is simply not an option. With digital technology advancements pushing ahead in almost every other industry and with the construction labour pool coming under serious pressure, the time has come for action.”

Break down the ‘data silos’

His review includes several case studies, each showing how to improve different dimensions of the industry’s performance. SkillsPlanner is particularly highlighted in a section titled “Lack of Collaboration & Improvement Culture”:

SkillsPlanner case study from Farmer Review“Lack of collaboration and joined up thinking also means the ability to use ‘open linked / big data’ principles to guide the industry on current and future skills requirements have not been maximised. The increasing importance of data means that such approaches would better enable the business case for investment in training and new ways of delivering by better aligning investment to a demand pipeline. … The culture of ‘data silos’ within the industry needs to be broken as part of the wider societal democratisation of data.”

(This was something touched upon in the government’s response to the Sainsbury review in its Post-16 Skills Plan in July 2016 – post.)

Encouragingly, the Farmer Review (p.31) also mentions two sister projects addressing the skills gap through brokerage: BuildForce, and the former Crossrail brokerage which has now been transferred to an Ethos-managed initiative called Build London.

Skills shortage hampers Smart Construction adoption

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Shortages of skills in the housebuilding sector have been highlighted again, this time in a report from the UK Construction Leadership Council’s innovation stream which has attempted to set some strategic direction and a roadmap for the housebuilding sector to improve capacity, productivity and innovation. At its heart is the promotion of ‘Smart Construction‘, combining the Digital Built Britain strategy (read our July 2015 post) and Modern Methods of Construction.

In the document’s foreword, Mike Chaldecott (from Saint-Gobain UK and Ireland – the full report and a summary are both available from the Saint-Gobain website here) highlights the need for planning through collective thought and collaboration across the industry, and the report starts by listing (in order of priority) 11 key barriers to adoption of Smart Construction – most of them very familiar:

  • Lack of collaboration
  • Lack of demand
  • Investment in suppliers who can support Smart Construction
  • Lending, valuation & insurance
  • Immature supply chain
  • Risk-averse culture in construction
  • Procurement models
  • Business case for change
  • Requires economies of scale
  • Lack of performance data
  • Skills shortage

CLC logoThe report also underlines key issues within the construction value-chain relating to Smart Construction, including a lack of Smart Construction skills, and the growing use of automated construction processes. The CLC’s innovation workstream has set up a number of working groups to address some of the challenges to adoption of Smart Construction, but key work on skills and culture appears to be the responsibility of the CLC’s skills workstream. (As previously noted in this blog, in the CLC has commissioned Mark Farmer to undertake a review of the functioning of the labour market, including skills provision, in the construction sector – and we understand his report will be published in the next week or so).

In August (post) we noted the work of a National Housing Taskforce, convened by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Housing & Planning, which had a workstream focused on construction skills, materials and technology.

 

Time to apply some military and manufacturing know-how?

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Module Building in factory environment

The UK construction skills crisis continues to delay projects, drive up costs and reduce quality. As we have discussed several times on the SkillsPlanner blog, the government and industry have produced various reports and instituted various campaigns, but the skills gap challenge is deep-rooted.

With the Global Financial Crisis wreaking havoc in 2007-2009 and plunging national construction industries around the world into recession, the UK shed hundreds of thousands of workers, many of whom never returned to the industry. As the UK emerged, somewhat shakily, from recession, replacing these workers has not been helped by the industry’s poor reputation – itself a symptom of deep systemic problems (To change the image, first change construction), including a lack of diversity, an ageing workforce, and decades of under-investment in research and development so that construction is rock-bottom of the digitalisation league, notwithstanding the efforts to promote technologies such as BIM (Tackling skills gaps – can we learn from BIM?).

We have welcomed government plans to reform post-16 education (post) and we are looking closely at recently announced changes to the UK apprenticeship levy scheme (summarised by TES here; the CITB suggests the changes could cut apprenticeship funding by a third). But we still think construction needs to adopt a long-term view of its skills and employment needs, and to be thinking about digital skills and the fourth industrial revolution.

Military-style skills provision?

We are not alone in this view. Gary Sullivan, CEO of construction logistics and security business Wilson James has urged much the same kind of new thinking. In a hard-hitting open letter to the recently reshuffled skills minister Robert Halfon MP published in Construction Manager magazine, Sullivan writes:

Gary Sullivan“… we need more than builders. We need to manufacture off site, we need people with good hand-to-eye co-ordination, we need people who can use state-of-the-art tools who can produce quality at speed again and again. The precious few young people who want to join the industry are being given the wrong skills and it is taking too long to train them in the wrong skills.”

He continues:

“We need to train differently, get people in at ground level and get them working. We could look at how the military train young people. In less than 18 weeks they produce the highest skill levels with technical expertise and a great work ethic. We have to invest in off-site manufacturing and in parallel train the workforce to fit, erect and plug in the state-of-the-art products created in factories in our Northern Powerhouse. Our ambition should be more F1 than 1961.”

It is no surprise that Sullivan mentions the military. Before founding Wilson James 25 years ago, Sullivan spent seven years in the paratroopers, and then worked for the UN where he learned about logistics. Upon return to civilian life, he worked initially as a logistics and security manager for Bovis Lend Lease on projects in the City of London, noting how much construction could benefit from improved logistics. Today, Wilson James employs over 3000 people, has an annual turnover in excess of £100m, and has recruited extensively from armed forces leavers.

BuildForce square 720pxBuilding a strong transition pathway from the armed forces into construction is actively supported by SkillsPlanner project leaders at Ethos (many present at the Westminster launch of BuildForce at the Houses of Parliament on 29 June). As Sullivan suggests, military personnel can quickly gain technical skills and have a strong work ethic, while many in senior ranks have both professional and managerial skills and attitudes that equip them well for work not just in construction as we currently know it, but in what construction might become over the next decade or two.

Modern methods of construction

Such thinking is already being applied in other countries which face similar challenges to the UK. For example, according to a 2015 Ford Foundation report, more than 2.3 million advanced manufacturing jobs in the United States are unfilled and over the next decade an estimated 2.7 million baby boomers will retire from this sector. In California, Workshops for Warriors is training veterans in advanced manufacturing – “Today we train veterans to make products, but tomorrow we will train them to train robots to make products,” says founder Hernàn Luis y Prado. Workshops for Warriors is also partnering with online learning provider SolidProfessor to provide additional skills in engineering software use, including several Autodesk applications familiar in construction.

Manufacturing is hugely important in construction. Common stereotypes of construction tend to focus on design offices or site-based activities, overlooking the key inputs of manufacturers and suppliers. In the UK, according to the Construction Products Association, the sector directly provides jobs for 313,000 people across 21,000 companies and has an annual turnover of more than £50 billion. And this importance is set to grow as the industry expands its adoption of Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) approaches in the coming years.

Sullivan rightly highlights the importance of off-site manufacture, and challenges the industry to become more like Formula 1 precision engineering. There are encouraging signs, even within one of the most conservative of UK construction sectors: housebuilding:

  • Earlier this year, Legal and General announced plans to “do for housing what Henry Ford did for the modern automotive industry” by manufacturing modular homes
  • Property Week recently reported the UK government and the mayor of London are drawing up plans to use modular construction to tackle the housing crisis
  • And when a skills crisis and a housing crisis coincide, you also need to review house-building skills (post).

Similar DfMA/off-site thinking is being applied to infrastructure projects and in relation to public and commercial buildings. Therefore, as Sullivan says, “We need to train differently“. We should be equipping people with 21st century technology skills, and breaking out of our traditional construction silos to learn from what the military, logistics and manufacturing can show us.

SkillsPlanner at Number 10

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SkillsPlanner team at No10

A personal landmark and also one for SkillsPlanner. This month saw a meeting with the Policy Unit at Number 10 Downing Street, attended by myself, Scott Young (Tideway, right) and fellow Ethos partner Colin Middleton (who heads up the SkillsPlanner councils and brokerage work packages). The meeting followed an introduction made by Mime Consulting, who have developed Skills Route (a portal to help young people understand their options after finishing GCSEs). Number 10 asked for more information and offered a meeting, so we went along to explain the project.

It was a very successful meeting. Lots of time given for us to talk (we went over the allotted time by about 20 minutes), with some pertinent questions asked and further connections made. All rather exciting.

Skills shortages hitting workmanship

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Scape report clip

Skills shortages are wrecking the quality of workmanship on construction projects, says a supply chain survey undertaken by Scape Group (see also report by Construction Enquirer).

Earlier this summer, Scape surveyed over 150 senior managers at public sector organisations across local and central government, along with a range of suppliers and subcontractors delivering built environment services. These included contractors who provide construction and civil engineering services, consultancies who support the public sector and facilities management providers. This survey sought the opinion of tiers 1, 2 and 3 of the public sector supply chain. Scape asked questions about the tendering process and bid opportunities, the stability of the supply chain, supply chain management, the skills shortage and an investigation into the sector’s reliance on public projects.

The resulting Sustainability in the Supply Chain report (available here) found 58% of contractors and suppliers cited shortages as negatively impacting the quality of their workmanship. The problem is worse in the public sector with 85% of managers seeing the quality of their built environment projects negatively affected by skills shortages.

Lack of labour is also busting budgets with 80% of public sector respondents and just under 40% of contractors and consultants blaming skills shortages for cost rises.

Mark Robinson, Scape Group Chief Executive, said:

“Our research has shown that the skills shortage is at breaking point, not only severely impacting the quality of what we are building but also our ability to build it on budget. While there is a mountain to climb to overcome this challenge, basic recommendations can be put in place to ease the burden, for example, 19% of contractors and subcontractors still do not have an apprenticeship scheme.”

Government skills plan promises reform – and data!

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Post-16 Skills Plan

Skills minister Nick Boles has said the UK government accepts and will implement every one of Lord Sainsbury’s 34 recommendations on technical education reform ‘unequivocally where possible within current budget constraints’ (reports Infrastructure Intelligence today).

The government’s Post-16 Skills Plan has been published simultaneously with, and as a response to, the Sainsbury independent panel report on technical and professional education, having been delayed due to the EU referendum (both are available online here). Sainsbury says the UK’s current system of technical education is overly complex and fails to deliver the skills most needed – as a result, the UK lags behind countries including the US, Germany and France in productivity per person.

Sainsbury’s recommendations include setting up distinct and coherent technical education routes for young people, with two modes of learning: employment-based, typically via an apprenticeship; and a college-based option. Government will build this new technical education route, simplifying the system by establishing a common framework of 15 technical education routes – including one for construction – encompassing all occupation types. Currently there are over 13,000 different qualifications available for 16-18 year-olds. Sainsbury also calls for a common initial core of maths and English for all technical qualifications before specialisation.

The report has been welcomed by EngineeringUK chief executive Paul Jackson, who said:

“It’s vital for the future health of the UK economy that young people in sufficient numbers develop the engineering skills that employers need. And it’s equally vital that the routes to developing these skills are student-centred, offering every young person the best possible opportunity to thrive in their chosen industry. …

“Putting employers front and centre of the development of the routes and providing more structured work placements as part of a technical education programme will have a positive impact on the work-readiness of those entering employment, with new recruits and employer both reaping the benefits. Government’s Post 16 Skills Plan is reassuring and has now to be backed with the practical and financial support their implementation will require.”

The Post-16 Skills Plan – some details

The Post-16 Skills Plan shows that construction – currently employing over 1.6 million people – is among the most critical routes to employment, second only to ‘business and administrative’ (2.2m), and currently ahead of ‘engineering and manufacturing’ (1.3m). The Plan will create high-quality, two-year, college-based programmes at the start of each route, suitable for 16–18 year-olds, but which can also be accessed by adults (students aged 19 and over).

New specialist training providers will also be introduced. The provision of university technical colleges (UTCs) will be expanded, and, where industries of national economic or strategic importance are facing particular challenges in recruitment, new National Colleges will be created. These will lead the design and delivery of technical skills training in five key sectors: nuclear, digital skills, high-speed rail, onshore oil and gas, and the creative and cultural industries.

Farmer Review

Rebecca Lovelace of EthosVO in conversation at June 2016 Westminster launch of BuildForce.Importantly, the Skills Plan also commits (sections 7.4 and 7.5) to “taking action in response to the review we have commissioned from the Construction Leadership Council and Mark Farmer (the Farmer Review) of the functioning of the labour market, including skills provision, in the construction sector.” The government will also review the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB), seeking to boost domestic construction skills and drive up productivity in the construction sector. We are pleased to read this – Mark Farmer has taken a keen interest in EthosVO’s SkillsPlanner and in related initiatives such as BuildForce, launched at the Houses of Parliament on 29 June.

More open data (hurray!)

And, of particular interest to SkillsPlanner and its development of an online skills platform driven by Open Linked Data (if you’re not sure what this is, watch Sir Nigel Shadbolt’s explanation) there is also a commitment to releasing more data. Chapter 6 of the Skills Plan makes “Information and data” the first of its key enabling factors. It aims to guide people through the system and make informed choices about what to study by:

“… making more information available about what students go on to do and how much they earn after taking particular routes or apprenticeships, and how the performance of colleges and other training providers influences students’ performance in working life. This information needs to be easy to access and understand so that people can use it to compare different education and career options and make confident and informed choices.

“… For the first time, we are using information held by the Department for Education; the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; the Department for Work and Pensions; and HM Revenue and Customs to get a better understanding of how young people move through education and into work, and from autumn 2016 we will be making more of this information publicly available….”