Secondly, and more worryingly, fewer young people are choosing careers in construction and engineering.  Why is this?  Why isn’t engineering sexy enough?  Every one of my son’s friends wants to be a computer programmer, lawyer, accountant or doctor.  None of them want to be architect or an engineer.  Why has this area been so devalued in the eyes of the young? 

The significance of this skills shortage, without stating the obvious, results in us not only turning down work, but turning down work from our regular clients.  This means loosing profit.
There are also unsavoury aspects of the skills shortage such as “head hunting”, (or poaching as I prefer to call it) of which I have had recent first hand experience.

What we all want and what our industry needs is well trained loyal staff, who are well paid and satisfied with their role whilst retaining the ambition to be better at their job and better engineers.

The recession of the early eighties changed our industry forever, with apprenticeships dropping to almost zero for nearly a decade.  This resulted in an “age-gap” in people entering the industry, one which seems to be showing its effects as engineers are promoted to more senior positions, there are less people to actually do the work.

The Governments aims for higher education for all are admirable but recent comments by Premier Gordon Brown and education secretary Alan Johnson suggesting raising the school leaving age to 18 is not the answer.  What we need is more help from government to provide the base qualifications, more courses at colleges and proper funding for schemes like the CSA NVQ so that we don’t have to rely on the free time given by our hard pressed assessors.

The industry “big guns” are starting to do their bit. Just last month Bovis Lend Lease launched a new training company in partnership with Jobcentre Plus, ConstructionSkills, the Learning and Skills Council and the London Development Agency with the aim of increasing construction industry skills.  “Be Onsite”, a not for profit organisation, will provide training and employment, focusing on skills where no training is available.

ConstructionSkills estimates that the construction industry needs over 85,000 new entrants per year.  Research by the sector skills councils suggest that around 13,000 construction workers and 1,500 electricians and plumbers are needed between now and 2012 just for the Olympics alone. 

So what do we do?  I believe we all need to recruit and train, and we need to do it now if we are to remain strong, competitive and profitable.  So get your cheque books out and get those youngsters on the DLC.  Julie and Carol are but a phone call away, and so is a brighter future.