Speech by Sir Michael Latham, Dl,
Chairman, CITB-ConstructionSkills, at
Constructionskills Scotland Launch, Edinburgh,
Wednesday, 14 January 2004
Thank you, Minister, for your remarks today. It is always a privilege for me to come to Scotland, which I do quite frequently, and I am proud to be an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. You combine responsibility for the two aspects of ConstructionSkills’ work – for individuals, encouraging personal development and expanding career horizons; for industry, the importance of a fully qualified workforce for economic development. Our mission is precisely to bring together the aspirations of men and women to build a career in an exciting and vital industry and the needs of employers for the skills which will enable the construction sector to flourish.
There is another beneficiary, if we succeed – society as a whole. The demands being made on the construction industry in Scotland, as across the UK, are considerable. The new schools and hospitals, the new roads and bridges, the new houses and public buildings which are needed require us to invest in new skills and to ensure that traditional ones are renewed. Add in housing stock transfer, nuclear decommissioning at Dounreay and waterfront regeneration in Glasgow, and it’s easy to see how construction accounts for 10% of Scotland’s GDP, and the public sector more than half of that.
In Scotland, as elsewhere, we are not starting from scratch. We face a daunting enough challenge without making life harder for ourselves by wasting time and effort on establishing new bureaucracies or arguing over where the new brass plate should go by the front door. And there are always those who are ready to snipe at any new initiative, claiming that it isn’t needed, or is duplicating other bodies’ efforts, or simply that it won’t work.
But because we are all used to working in partnership both here in Scotland and at the UK level – and the wide range of representation from across the industry here today testifies to this - we have been able to make a flying start. We will achieve a great deal by building on what is already there and ensuring that all our different activities are well co-ordinated.
I want in a few moments to say something specific about the challenges facing construction training in Scotland, and your strong response to them. They do differ in some respects from other parts of the UK. But let me first paint the wider context. Very simply, “What is ConstructionSkills for?” In four words – to make a difference.
First, it is our task to offer leadership and pressure to draw the approach of government, funding bodies and educational insitutions together in such a way that policies on education, training and skills accurately reflect the views of the industry, its employers and its workforce. Our Partnership document in Scotland already seeks to do this. We shall build on those excellent foundations.
On the UK stage, we are joining the SSDA’s Skills for Business network, which will create a powerful voice for industry, including employers, employees and trades unions. This will also open the door to increased influence over the funding of educational and training initiatives.
Secondly, we will be able for the first time, with our partners in the CIC and CITB (NI), to represent the whole industry, right across the UK: architects in Alloa, bricklayers in Ballymena, carpenters in Carmarthen and demolition experts in Doncaster. We will adopt an integrated approach to recruitment and training, an important step forward at a time when skills shortages not only affect the craft sector but also graduate entry to the construction industry. One illustration of our new partnership with CIC is the launch last autumn of our major national schools design competition, Creative Spaces. The competition, which incorporates CIC’s Design Quality Indicators, aims to encourage young people to become the builders, architects, engineers and surveyors of the future. So far over 400 schools have signed up, including 46 in Scotland.
Thirdly, we intend to use our new status to help the industry to improve its competitiveness. We will do so by increasing both funding of, and emphasis on, management and supervisory training. This is a continuing strong requirement for the industry. Skills at all levels need continuous attention, updating and career-long reinforcement.
The Scottish Executive’s endorsement of the value of work-based learning is very strong. I wholeheartedly agree with their sentiment that “work-based learning in schools is a key means of developing vocational skills and enterprising behaviour”.
As well as avoiding new bureaucracy, we much recognise and welcome divergence where appropriate. Having a new remit which encompasses the whole industry and the whole of the UK brings with it some particular responsibilities. We must work with the grain of national and regional differences, rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach. To take one obvious example: you in Scotland have had a different system of education from that prevailing in England and Wales. You also have a strong and deep rooted training culture and commitment to vocational skills. At ConstructionSkills we are very well aware that the starting-points are different in different places and that the paths of progress will also differ. And there is nothing wrong with that.
However, one advantage of a UK-wide body, with strong national and regional representation, may be that we can spot ideas that are working in one location and see if they can, suitably adapted to local circumstances, work elsewhere. The traffic in ideas will be multi-directional and by no means just one way (either north or south!). We can all learn from Best Practice anywhere.
This interlinked network of organisations and policies is admirably set out in the Scottish Executive’s recent paper to which the Minister made reference – Learning through Life, Life through Learning. The paper seems to me to identify some significant and achievable goals. It makes an admirable blueprint for the development of a true culture of lifelong learning. At ConstructionSkills, we look forward to playing our part to help to realise this ambitious programme. Incidentally, the paper has an excellent, succinct statement of what SSCs are designed to achieve: “These new bodies” it says “will play a vital role in articulating employer demand for skills and bringing influence to bear to facilitate relevant provision of training by the supply side”. Vital indeed – and it will be our job to ensure that employer demand is heard and then acted upon.
Of course, ConstructionSkills is not the only SSC show in town. I’m delighted to see representatives from our colleagues at SummitSkills here today. The two sectors have always enjoyed a co-operative relationship in Scotland and this has been demonstrated most recently by the inclusion of plumbers and electrical contractors in our research into skills shortages and skills gaps. Each sector will aways have its own distinct needs but where we can co-operate we will do so. May I say that I personally span both sides of this fence, not that it is a fence of division, rather of defined footfall. I chair three major organisations in the M & E sector, two of which also involve Scotland and the third has strong links with your country, through close liaison with the Scottish JIB, SELECT, and AMICUS in Scotland.
Across the UK as a whole, the recruitment challenge is fierce: well over a third of a million new recruits to the industry over the next five years. In Scotland, our Skills Foresight Report bears out the general evidence of the Futureskills Scotland Employers Skills Survey, conducted at the end of 2002, that skills shortages are not so severe as in some other parts of the UK, and this is a tribute to your long standing commitment to training. Even so, the training requirement for management and professional staff, for those involved in the wood trades, and for plumbers will be significant. Looking further ahead, the demographics presented in the Executive’s report suggest that skills shortages are likely to be more noticeable, unless the industry can become more successful at attracting late entrants and non-traditional applicants. Women and ethnic minorities remain woefully under-represented in the industry. Quite apart from any other considerations, the industry cannot go on failing to sell itself to these parts of our community if it wants to remain competitive.
That is why it is vital that the image of the industry continues to improve. I welcome the emphasis placed on this aspect by the Modernising Construction Strategic Group in its report last summer. They made a number of valuable recommendations in this, and other, areas.
The Futureskills Scotland survey also revealed that skills gaps – where employees may not be fully proficient in the competencies they require – and what they describe as “latent” skills gaps, where investment could bring benefits to employer and employee alike – are more widespread than simple skills shortages. This is why, in construction, it is so vital to ensure that those already in the industry are continually updating and upgrading their skills. In this context, the unification of qualifications in Scotland under the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework offers considerable advantages to the development of genuine opportunities for lifelong learning.
It is the foundations that matter. Here again, Scotland is doing well. In terms of Modern Apprenticeships, for example, you are already doing more than your share by recruiting between a fifth and a quarter of the apprentices under our GB-wide Managing Agency last year. I was pleased to see in the Executive’s report a commitment to allocating extra funds in order to increase the total number of Modern Apprenticeships, as well as the numbers of those undertaking training whilst in employment. Given the unmet demand for Apprenticeships, to which the Strategic Group again refers, this is most welcome; but as the Group’s report notes, we must also look to businesses to back up their demand for skills with a willingness to host apprentices.
Since we must seek to build on what we already have, we also retain our Industry Training Board status. That involves the duty to collect the levy and to pay grants to secure much-needed training.
Last year once again we were able to return significantly more to the industry in various ways than we collected in levy. The total amount paid out in grants to employers, college fees and training allowances increased by 19% to more than £95 million, of which more than half was available for training new recruits. We also funded many other schemes and projects, including National Construction Week. We have increased recruitment of apprentices in our own scheme by over 13% in the last two years. But there is still a mountain to climb. In 2002, the last year for which we have full figures, 122,000 recruits joined the UK construction sector. That is good news, but there is still more to do.
The challenge for us now, as a Sector Skills Council, is to use the new authority we have been given to influence policies on, and funding of, education and training to ensure that throughout the UK the construction sector can meet the increasingly heavy demands placed on it.
In Scotland, we look forward enormously to working with our colleagues in the Scottish Executive and Parliament, the Scottish Construction Industry Group, and with the new Scottish Construction Innovation and Excellence Forum and Graeme Millar. We will also work with our partners in SummitSkills, and in the industry as a whole, to deliver what is expected of us. We look forward also to developing new partnerships in specific areas, such as that for heritage work with Historic Scotland, which is such a vital contribution to our environment, our history, and our future, and which also brings so many to Scotland from all over the world.
This is an exciting, but also crucial, time for a great and creative industry. We are determined that 2004 will see us take large strides in our campaign to provide the UK with the best-trained, educated and motivated workforce anywhere. World class? Yes. But also, world beaters. In four simple words, words very well understood in Scotland, which has produced so many leaders and innovators in every walk of life – Nothing but the best.
