Estates Gazette • 15 February 2025 • Mark Farmer

Having been approached by the Department for Education in early 2023 to conduct the next arm’s-length body review of industry training boards, I immediately recognised it was a chance to do a deep dive into some of the important but thorny questions surrounding the UK’s construction workforce.

In the building and civil engineering sectors, the performance of the Construction Industry Training Board always draws a spectrum of opinions. I challenged it in 2016 in Modernise or Die, which led to an ITB review the following year.

However, in response to the questions surrounding its existence, there is the need for an honest assessment as to whether the industry would be in a better place if it was left to its own devices in investing in skills and training, without the need for a statutory intervention, including the imposition of a levy.

I concluded fairly early in the process that it was unlikely and that the industry still suffers from an externally driven market failure in its ability to invest sufficiently in human capital. I therefore believe that an intervention is still warranted, albeit the outcome of that intervention needs to be much more impactful.

The review focuses on how the model of intervention can be reformed to work better and sets out a series of measures that can move the ITBs towards a workforce planning and development function, with the primary aim of lifting whole workforce capability and capacity. That may sound like a grand ambition, but I believe there are a series of priorities and goals that are wholly attainable with the right leadership and with support from industry and government.

The review’s publication has been delayed by more than a year by political change but, in many ways, the timing of its launch last month has only increased its relevance. Set against a continued backdrop of economic uncertainty, ongoing workforce “hollowing out” and a new government doubling down on economic growth, my findings and recommendations are about ensuring the construction industry can better support that growth, whether it be via housebuilding, infrastructure, private commercial construction or green energy transition.

The chancellor has made pro-growth commitments including a new “Silicon Valley” growth corridor for Oxford-Cambridge, expansion at Heathrow, as well as new road, rail and reservoir investments. All of this on top of the pre-existing commitment to build 1.5m homes in this parliament.

There has been some commentary in the days since as to whether all of this is achievable considering the workforce and skills challenges we face. The reality is that this is not a binary question and there is no hard ceiling on what the industry can attempt to deliver. It will rightly always welcome announcements regarding construction spending and a more stable, long-term pipeline which it can then invest against, but we all need to be more honest about the ability for our industry to deliver increasing workloads on time, on budget and to required quality with increasingly inelastic resources.

As the author of Modernise or Die, some may be surprised that I have urged caution about the role of technological innovation, design and production reforms or any big shifts in procurement models. Although change is happening, it is slow and has been further derailed by the recent downturn. We need then to focus increasingly on getting more out of the industry as it currently delivers through practical and incremental measures which reflect the highly compromised environment within which we organise things and trade.

This is particularly relevant for the site-based workforce which is the main target audience for CITB-mandated activity and which is likely to be in shortest supply. A major theme of the review is that improved whole workforce competence should lead to increased productivity and capacity. Just 1% in productivity improvement for the site workforce is equivalent to 10,000 extra workers.

There is no magic wand that will step-change productivity or the number of new entrants attracted to the industry or indeed the numbers capable of being absorbed into employed traineeships and apprenticeships. We need to find all the levers that we can push and pull to cumulatively improve capability and capacity at scale.

The review’s recommendations are far-reaching and they should act as a prompt for how we can and should build more workforce resiliency. We need to future proof our industry’s ability to confidently deliver the economic growth that the country is crying out for.