Construction Industry Council Research Identifies Recruitment Difficulties

The Construction Industry Council (CIC) launched their Professional Services Survey this week which revealed that 74% of the UK Construction Professional services (CPS) firms have found that job applicants are likely to be lacking the necessary technical skills, with over 50% of all CPS firms anticipate recruitment difficulties over the next year.

The CPS sector,which includes professions such as engineering, architecture and surveying, currently employs 270,000 people, and requires 12,000 competent new professionals to enter the industry every year to meet demand. This figure could increase 20% of current CPS professionals could retire in the next 10 years.

The research also found that:

• All CPS firms reported some difficulties in recruitment with between 40% and 53% reporting ‘hard to fill’ vacancies.

• The main cause of recruitment difficulties was a low number of applicants with required skills, resulting in the majority of firms having to increase workload for other staff.

• CPS employers believe that the quality of recruits who are either graduate level, part-qualified members of professional institutions or trained to other levels has declined.

The skills gap is most pronounced in Building Services Engineering firms

Mark Way, Director of Skills, CIC, commented: “This research demonstrates the value of the contribution made to the UK economy by Professional Services and emphasises the scale of the professional input necessary to support the current levels of UK construction activity. The lack of a whole range of key skills in recruits is of real concern; a problem compounded by a future shortage of potential recruits."