Recommendation 85

In Chapter 3, we highlighted the pressures facing the construction skills workforce, the challenges of attracting and retaining talent, poor educational outcomes, and differences between expectations and the reality of working on a construction site. Mr Hopkins said that factory skills are “easier to ramp up than on site skills”, adding that “Putting people into factories and training them up to use machinery is a quicker process to get a high-quality product at the other end than trying to train people on building sites”. 145 While individuals would still be needed onsite, he indicated that a move towards more innovative construction methods could help with the skills shortage. 146