A new report  by the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry and KPMG is warning that UK infrastructure projects worth £96 billion could be in jeopardy unless an acute skills shortage is addressed.

With 20% more workers required to meet the pipeline of around £96 billion of construction projects in 2014-17, the London and South East is facing a major skills crisis. The report says this could impact the wider economy as early as April 2015, when a total of over 600,000 workers will be needed on site to deliver major projects currently in planning.

The Report, ‘Skills to build’, outlines the labour requirements to deliver construction projects in London and the South East between 2014 - 2017 and the gaps in training that must be filled to meet the demand.

The industry has already experienced great difficulties in recruiting enough skilled workers, for both professional roles and manual trades, to keep pace with new work. According to the report, a 51% increase in training provision would be required to meet demand for skilled labour between 2014 and 2017 to plug a gap of nearly 15,000 people.

 Unless the supply of construction labour is increased, house building targets will not be met and the delivery of large infrastructure projects will be jeopardised - 255,000 workers are needed on site to deliver the 2015 pipeline of housing alone and 400,000 of the workforce expected to retire in the next 5-10 years.

The report includes the following recommendations to help fill the skills gap:

• Infrastructure UK should drive a commitment to embed skills and employment requirements in public procurement contracts, aimed at both Tier One contractors and suppliers.
• Local authorities should maintain and share a pipeline of future projects, with skills responsibility and funding devolved to the most appropriate level of functional economic activity, to enable the commissioning of demand-led training provision.
•  The Skills Funding Agency should convene industry bodies and representatives to redesign training and apprenticeship frameworks to reflect modern methods of construction, and disseminate them for adoption by training providers.

 Richard Threlfall, KPMG UK Head of Infrastructure, Building and Construction said:

“For the first time in many generations, the UK has a strong pipeline of construction and infrastructure projects to reinvigorate the economy and drive our future competitiveness. But delivery of that pipeline is now in jeopardy - not for lack of political will or funding – but for lack of a sufficiently large and trained workforce.  Unless action is taken now, our housing targets will be missed, and infrastructure projects delayed.”

“This report calls on the industry itself to wake up and take responsibility to increase levels of training dramatically. It also calls on Government and training providers to recognise that the industry is changing, with ever greater application of technology and a trend towards offsite manufacturing - the skills required in the industry tomorrow will be very different from the skills required today. And above all it calls on all in the industry to take steps to boost the image of the construction sector as an attractive career path for the next generation in our schools and colleges.”

Click here to download Skills to build