Tag Archives: Mark Farmer

Housing white paper: little new on skills

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Fixing our broken housing market

The Government’s new Housing White Paper, Fixing our Broken Housing Market, mentions skills 20 times (most of the mentions are on page 41) in a largely underwhelming document over 100 pages long. However, it doesn’t say anything particularly new or radical about skills – though this is perhaps to be expected from a Conservative Government writing about an inherently conservative industry (and house-building is, arguably, the most conservative sector within construction).

It makes a passing mention of Mark Farmer’s review, Modernise or Die, published in October 2016 (read our post), touching on his advocacy of offsite fabrication (read this Construction Index summary, for example), and acknowledges that the industry faces particular challenges in certain regions, such as London and the South East, as Brexit looms. It continues:

“This is an important moment and we should make the most of the opportunity for industry to invest in its workforce, alongside tackling the issues raised by the Farmer Review. The larger companies need to take responsibility for ensuring that they have a sustainable supply chain, working with contractors to address skills requirements.”

Three areas are singled out for Government action. It says it will:

  • Post-16 Skills Plan“change the way the Government supports training in the construction industry” – This will include the conclusion of an ongoing review, chaired by Paul Morrell, of the Construction Industry Training Board’s purpose, functions and operations, with the government looking to “ensure that developers benefitting from public funding use the projects to train the workforce of the future.”
  • “launch a new route into construction in September 2019” – as announced in the Skills Plan produced in July 2016 (blog post), it says it will “streamline the number of courses available and improve quality and employability”
  • “work across Government, with the Construction Leadership Council, to challenge house builders and other construction companies to deliver their part of the bargain.”

The white paper then highlights what can be achieved from investing in training as part of major construction programmes such as Crossrail, to see whether this approach can be applied more broadly in the construction sector, particularly by holding developers and local authorities to account. This is mainly about improving transparency of the end-to-end house building process, and identifying where blockages lie (encouragingly there are three mentions of “transparent data”). This could be an areas where SkillsPlanner’s modelling of supply and demand of construction skills could play a crucial role, as Mark Farmer pointed out last year.

farmer review cover“The increasing importance of data means that such approaches would better enable the business case for investment in training and new ways of delivering by better aligning investment to a demand pipeline. … The culture of ‘data silos’ within the industry needs to be broken as part of the wider societal democratisation of data.”

 

New SkillsPlanner Intelligence Briefing

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SERIO 3rd briefing

Keeping SkillsPlanner stakeholders updated on key developments, Plymouth University’s SERIO applied research unit is producing a series of intelligence briefings covering construction skills in industry and government. SERIO’s third briefing (PDF – will open in new tab) is now available in our media section, along with the first (published in February 2016 – post) and second (July 2016 – post).

Written in clear, non-academic English, these briefings are intended to inform and engage our audiences with our ongoing R&D project. The latest looks at four topics:

Apprenticeship Levy: In August 2016 the government released further details concerning the specifics of the Apprenticeship Levy. This includes a 90% apprenticeship training co-investment from government for non-levy paying businesses; and the introduction of 15 funding bands that will cap the maximum price government will co-invest towards the cost of each apprenticeship.

Further Education Provision: The findings from a panel chaired by Lord Sainsbury into the ‘over-complex’ technical and professional qualification environment have been released, alongside a series of recommendations which have been accepted by the government. The Post-16 skills plan sets out a streamlined technical education system where students will be able to choose from up to 15 distinct technical education routes, with the first routes being made available from 2019. In addition, the QAA have announced that they are developing a new characteristics statement for Degree Apprenticeships. Currently there are 13 Degree Apprenticeships on offer and this move will ensure that they are formally recognised within the higher education system.

Farmer Review: This month, a report on the state of the skills crisis within the construction sector has been published, detailing 10 critical areas where the construction industry is showing signs of failure. The review notes how an ageing workforce and surging costs driven by a shortage of skilled workers have stalled investment. Among the recommendations set out in the report, several refer to the need for skills and training to better reflect the needs of a future modernised industry, including the use of OpenData to address the construction skills gap, specifically mentioning SkillsPlanner (read our blog post).

Neighbourhood Planning Bill: A series of new amendments have been made to the Neighbourhood Planning Bill which are now due to be considered by a Public Bill Committee. The Bill seeks to simplify how plans can be revised as local circumstances change and measures will support more housebuilding and provide more local say over developments.

Farmer Review highlights SkillsPlanner opportunity

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farmer review cover

Mark Farmer’s review of the UK construction labour model for the UK’s Construction Leadership Council, starkly titled Modernise or Die (PDF available here), has been published today (read news release). It has been widely reported in both trade press and national newspapers, and somewhat cautiously welcomed by the CLC’s co-chair Andrew Wolstenholme.

We have been awaiting this report for some months, as previous blog posts attest (here and here, for example), and our patience has been rewarded. Farmer’s hard-hitting report prominently highlights the SkillsPlanner opportunity, with an entire page (p.34) devoted to a case study about the project.

Time for action

According to Farmer, Britain’s construction industry faces “inexorable decline” unless radical steps are taken to address its longstanding problems, which include its dysfunctional training model, its lack of innovation and collaboration as well as its non-existent research and development (R&D) culture. He also said the industry needs to be far more joined-up with its clients in how it approaches skills.

With more people leaving the industry each year than joining, the construction workforce is shrinking, placing increasingly severe constraints on its capacity to build housing and infrastructure. Reliance on a fractured supply chain and self-employment also means there is little incentive for contractors to invest in long term training for the labour force. Farmer says:

“… carrying on as we are is simply not an option. With digital technology advancements pushing ahead in almost every other industry and with the construction labour pool coming under serious pressure, the time has come for action.”

Break down the ‘data silos’

His review includes several case studies, each showing how to improve different dimensions of the industry’s performance. SkillsPlanner is particularly highlighted in a section titled “Lack of Collaboration & Improvement Culture”:

SkillsPlanner case study from Farmer Review“Lack of collaboration and joined up thinking also means the ability to use ‘open linked / big data’ principles to guide the industry on current and future skills requirements have not been maximised. The increasing importance of data means that such approaches would better enable the business case for investment in training and new ways of delivering by better aligning investment to a demand pipeline. … The culture of ‘data silos’ within the industry needs to be broken as part of the wider societal democratisation of data.”

(This was something touched upon in the government’s response to the Sainsbury review in its Post-16 Skills Plan in July 2016 – post.)

Encouragingly, the Farmer Review (p.31) also mentions two sister projects addressing the skills gap through brokerage: BuildForce, and the former Crossrail brokerage which has now been transferred to an Ethos-managed initiative called Build London.

Skills shortage hampers Smart Construction adoption

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Shortages of skills in the housebuilding sector have been highlighted again, this time in a report from the UK Construction Leadership Council’s innovation stream which has attempted to set some strategic direction and a roadmap for the housebuilding sector to improve capacity, productivity and innovation. At its heart is the promotion of ‘Smart Construction‘, combining the Digital Built Britain strategy (read our July 2015 post) and Modern Methods of Construction.

In the document’s foreword, Mike Chaldecott (from Saint-Gobain UK and Ireland – the full report and a summary are both available from the Saint-Gobain website here) highlights the need for planning through collective thought and collaboration across the industry, and the report starts by listing (in order of priority) 11 key barriers to adoption of Smart Construction – most of them very familiar:

  • Lack of collaboration
  • Lack of demand
  • Investment in suppliers who can support Smart Construction
  • Lending, valuation & insurance
  • Immature supply chain
  • Risk-averse culture in construction
  • Procurement models
  • Business case for change
  • Requires economies of scale
  • Lack of performance data
  • Skills shortage

CLC logoThe report also underlines key issues within the construction value-chain relating to Smart Construction, including a lack of Smart Construction skills, and the growing use of automated construction processes. The CLC’s innovation workstream has set up a number of working groups to address some of the challenges to adoption of Smart Construction, but key work on skills and culture appears to be the responsibility of the CLC’s skills workstream. (As previously noted in this blog, in the CLC has commissioned Mark Farmer to undertake a review of the functioning of the labour market, including skills provision, in the construction sector – and we understand his report will be published in the next week or so).

In August (post) we noted the work of a National Housing Taskforce, convened by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Housing & Planning, which had a workstream focused on construction skills, materials and technology.

 

House-building skills gap review launched

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RICS and APPG

SkillsPlanner’s partners and collaborators include a number of major infrastructure providers (Tideway, Crossrail, HS2 and Transport for London, for example), but that doesn’t mean we are ignoring the needs of other construction sectors, such as house-building. So we are particularly interested in the work of the National Housing Taskforce, convened by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS – another SkillsPlanner collaborator) and the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Housing & Planning.

The Taskforce has identified 12 workstreams with one particularly focused on construction skills, materials and technology:

We cannot achieve either the desired quality of quantity of new housing without addressing the skills gap that currently exists across the construction sector. Furthermore, there are unprecedented opportunities for improving productivity and driving down costs through the use of new construction techniques, such as off-site manufacture (OSM).

This work-stream is charged with addressing the main issues in the construction labour market, including availability, productivity and diversity. It will develop ideas for action for both government and industry, aimed at ensuring we have the capacity to deliver the homes we need.

Construction will need to findEach work-stream is being led by a relevant organisation that will submit recommendations to the Taskforce by the end of the year, and the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB, author of a 2015 report on the ageing workforce), has issued a call for evidence (to be submitted by 9 September 2016). CIOB policy manager David Hawkes said:

“At its most basic level, what this workstream boils down to is capacity. Studies have shown the housing sector needs 120,000 new employees just to meet the required annual level of homes the UK needs. At the same time, house builders say they cannot build more than 150,000 homes per year via conventional means.

“What this suggests to us is that something needs to fundamentally change if we are to properly address the housing crisis. We need more people working more productively and we have to work out how best to utilise and implement new technologies, materials and processes.”

Post-16 Skills PlanMr Hawkes said that the CIOB will analyse the responses it receives and then host ‘inquiry-style discussions’ before submitting its recommendations to the National Housing Taskforce by the end of the year.  The final National Housing Taskforce report, incorporating recommendations from all 12 workstreams, is expected to be released by spring 2017.

We hope this initiative will helpfully coincide with the publication of the Farmer Review. When the UK government launched its Post-16 Skills Plan last month (post), it committed to taking action in response to the review commissioned from the Construction Leadership Council and Mark Farmer of the functioning of the labour market, including skills provision, in the construction sector.

Housing is also, of course, a particularly acute issue for London and the south-east – the target area for the initial SkillsPlanner project.

Update (24 August 2016) – New London Architecture is holding a free breakfast debate, “Are we facing a construction skills crisis in housing?” on Friday 30 September 2016. More details here.

Government skills plan promises reform – and data!

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Post-16 Skills Plan

Skills minister Nick Boles has said the UK government accepts and will implement every one of Lord Sainsbury’s 34 recommendations on technical education reform ‘unequivocally where possible within current budget constraints’ (reports Infrastructure Intelligence today).

The government’s Post-16 Skills Plan has been published simultaneously with, and as a response to, the Sainsbury independent panel report on technical and professional education, having been delayed due to the EU referendum (both are available online here). Sainsbury says the UK’s current system of technical education is overly complex and fails to deliver the skills most needed – as a result, the UK lags behind countries including the US, Germany and France in productivity per person.

Sainsbury’s recommendations include setting up distinct and coherent technical education routes for young people, with two modes of learning: employment-based, typically via an apprenticeship; and a college-based option. Government will build this new technical education route, simplifying the system by establishing a common framework of 15 technical education routes – including one for construction – encompassing all occupation types. Currently there are over 13,000 different qualifications available for 16-18 year-olds. Sainsbury also calls for a common initial core of maths and English for all technical qualifications before specialisation.

The report has been welcomed by EngineeringUK chief executive Paul Jackson, who said:

“It’s vital for the future health of the UK economy that young people in sufficient numbers develop the engineering skills that employers need. And it’s equally vital that the routes to developing these skills are student-centred, offering every young person the best possible opportunity to thrive in their chosen industry. …

“Putting employers front and centre of the development of the routes and providing more structured work placements as part of a technical education programme will have a positive impact on the work-readiness of those entering employment, with new recruits and employer both reaping the benefits. Government’s Post 16 Skills Plan is reassuring and has now to be backed with the practical and financial support their implementation will require.”

The Post-16 Skills Plan – some details

The Post-16 Skills Plan shows that construction – currently employing over 1.6 million people – is among the most critical routes to employment, second only to ‘business and administrative’ (2.2m), and currently ahead of ‘engineering and manufacturing’ (1.3m). The Plan will create high-quality, two-year, college-based programmes at the start of each route, suitable for 16–18 year-olds, but which can also be accessed by adults (students aged 19 and over).

New specialist training providers will also be introduced. The provision of university technical colleges (UTCs) will be expanded, and, where industries of national economic or strategic importance are facing particular challenges in recruitment, new National Colleges will be created. These will lead the design and delivery of technical skills training in five key sectors: nuclear, digital skills, high-speed rail, onshore oil and gas, and the creative and cultural industries.

Farmer Review

Rebecca Lovelace of EthosVO in conversation at June 2016 Westminster launch of BuildForce.Importantly, the Skills Plan also commits (sections 7.4 and 7.5) to “taking action in response to the review we have commissioned from the Construction Leadership Council and Mark Farmer (the Farmer Review) of the functioning of the labour market, including skills provision, in the construction sector.” The government will also review the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB), seeking to boost domestic construction skills and drive up productivity in the construction sector. We are pleased to read this – Mark Farmer has taken a keen interest in EthosVO’s SkillsPlanner and in related initiatives such as BuildForce, launched at the Houses of Parliament on 29 June.

More open data (hurray!)

And, of particular interest to SkillsPlanner and its development of an online skills platform driven by Open Linked Data (if you’re not sure what this is, watch Sir Nigel Shadbolt’s explanation) there is also a commitment to releasing more data. Chapter 6 of the Skills Plan makes “Information and data” the first of its key enabling factors. It aims to guide people through the system and make informed choices about what to study by:

“… making more information available about what students go on to do and how much they earn after taking particular routes or apprenticeships, and how the performance of colleges and other training providers influences students’ performance in working life. This information needs to be easy to access and understand so that people can use it to compare different education and career options and make confident and informed choices.

“… For the first time, we are using information held by the Department for Education; the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; the Department for Work and Pensions; and HM Revenue and Customs to get a better understanding of how young people move through education and into work, and from autumn 2016 we will be making more of this information publicly available….”