Industry leaders discuss building for the future

Experts in the construction industry had joined together to discuss how the UK can meet the 300,000 homes a year target. Due to the ongoing rise of the UK's population, the government has given house builders tougher targets. To achieve the government's objectives, house builders need to change their strategies quickly.

Building future-proof homes

The challenge to build more new homes creates more issues along the way:

• Purchasing land
• Increasing demand for quality materials
• Increasing demand to build affordable housing
• Training and hiring more staff/contractors

Leaders in this industry discussed how they can solve these challenges while building such a high amount of homes every year.

“The ones that are not prepared to embrace [the future] are going to fall by the wayside.” - Darren Gill, managing director, Bouygues UK

Tackling one of the biggest issues in the industry

The solution to this problem seems pretty simple; if you have more staff, the quicker you can build homes, but this is simply not the case. The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) released a report showing that there is a high demand for skills within the construction industry. The report clearly shows that there needs to be a large amount of construction training needed before starting on these projects. According to the report, the CITB have predicted that the lack of skilled workers could impact over 20,000 construction projects every year. The report also suggests that over 400,000 construction workers in the UK could retire in the next 5-10 years, so it's vital that the younger generation a ready and trained to meet the requirements of building new, quality homes.

“We have got to have some free thinking in our education for our young people and somehow move away from the traditional subjects,” - Kent Taylor, chief executive of Red Door Ventures.

How do we get more workers in the industry?

The good news in that the government have been fully supportive by encouraging more young people to take apprenticeships. They have a huge target of filling 3 million places across all sectors in the UK. Many companies that work within the house building industry such as AJC Carpentry are offering places for apprentices to work on their sites while working with industry professionals. The company also hire experienced carpenters and joiners to support them with a variety of sites in the South of England. This is just one of many examples that are being used across the country, which will help motivate the younger generation to build future homes for a rapidly increasing population. It's good to see that more apprenticeships are being introduced in this sector, but it's important that the basic skills are also taught in secondary schools. This should help encourage and inspire young people to get into the world of construction and enhance their skills in carpentry & joinery. Another way to encourage more employees to work on building sites is to introduce more flexible working hours. This change would be more attractive to staff who may need an incentive to stay and work for longer periods of time. Having more flexible hours would also give more inexperienced workers, the time to build up their knowledge and skills during their shifts.

What was the outcome of the meeting?

The meeting took place on the 25th May at the Palace of Westminster and the participants were;

Lee Bishop (Major developments director, Taylor Wimpey) Zohra Chiheb (Project architect, Levitt Bernstein) Kate Davies (Chief executive, Notting Hill Genesis) Darren Gill (Managing director, Bouygues UK) Richard Hyams (Director, Astudio Architects) Mark Farmer (Chief executive and founder, Cast Consultancy) Fabienne Viala (Chair, Bouygues UK)

Matthew Howell-Jones (Partner, Arcadis) Tony Newman (Leader, Croydon Council) Jamie Ratcliff (Assistant director, Greater London Authority) Darren Rodwell (Leader, Barking and Dagenham Council) Eloise Shepherd (Head of housing and planning, London Councils) Kent Taylor (Chief executive, Red Door Ventures)

The particular discussion they had will be the first of many. The most important part is that leading house builders and developers are aware that this is a long-term process, and there need to be new ideas to innovate and introduce methods to achieve these goals. Daren Gill (Bouygues UK) summarises the meeting beautifully by saying:

“The future is now. Now is the time to embrace it and collaborate. Nobody should be afraid. Everybody is ready to embrace change. Because if not, we'll be sitting here in another two years' time talking about the same thing.”

The decline in skilled workers in this industry was expected, but this can be solved if industry experts, the government and schools continue to collaborate and encourage younger people to work in this sector. Thanks for reading. What are your views on the housing crisis? Are apprenticeships the solution or does the technology of building construction need to be improved? Guest Post by AJC Carpentry.