Bridging the Widening Skills Gap: How and why?

Dodging the Construction Industry Iceberg

The new technologies, systems and ideas in the construction industry opens up fantastic new potential. However, as with anything new, people have to know how to use the systems to get anything out of them. It’s no good talking about the time-saving nature of modular construction, if the workers on site aren’t skilled up on putting it all together. It can be as advanced as physically possible but it still won’t be water tight if those actually doing the job aren’t skilled up with the new technology.

So we come to one of the looming icebergs veering into the path of the construction industry, the widening skills gap. You can have all the technology in the world but without the people to utilise it, it’s simply expensive and useless especially if older systems still dominate.

Career Advice for Career Advisers might be needed

As a standard, career advice in the UK is lacking. Construction in particular suffers from a focus on education paths for traditional trades with courses on new methods hard to find. In an industry as wide reaching as construction, a sector wide approach with buy in on all levels will be required to fully counter this information gap. However, there are organisations already stepping in to attempt to bridge the skill gap and get more people in roles within the industry.

The skills gap is too wide to be bridged by any one organisation, but the efforts by the likes of Redrow and LABC to support those looking for careers in construction are fantastic steps in the right direction.

What’s key is that these new technologies are unlikely to slow down for the foreseeable future and as such the industry is going to continue to evolve. So it must learn to evolve and adapt with it or risk being left behind.