Clearview National February 2015 - Issue 159 | Page 75

businessnews

Industry Needs to Improve Skills Gap in 2015
»»Richard Threlfall,
KPMG’s Head of Infrastructure,
Building and Construction,
highlights that this year the
construction industry will need
to address the widening skills gap
and take further steps to improve
the image of the industry. He
said:
“Many in the industry
are nervous about what the
General Election will mean for
construction, but I am confident
we will not see a repeat of the
mass cancellation of schemes that
took place in 2010. Our main
political parties understand the
importance of infrastructure
investment for driving the
UK’s future competitiveness.
We estimate that by 2016, the
country will be investing £45bn
per annum in infrastructure, and
the Government’s construction
pipeline now shows a total of

£116bn of spend over nearly
2,000 projects. But that does not
mean the industry can relax. It
has plenty of challenges, but they
are more subtle than five years
ago, and more for the industry
itself to address.
“As early as April 2015, the
delivery of the UK construction
pipeline will hit a constraint
imposed not by lack of political
will or funding but for lack of

a sufficiently large and trained
workforce. We estimate that by
that 150,000 more workers will
be needed on site to deliver major
projects in London and the South
East. The industry is failing to
hire sufficiently fast, and is failing
to train in sufficient volume, the
workforce it needs.
“The construction i