Construction Skills gap


WEB LINKS www.cibse.org www.raeng.org.uk


For Low Carbon Housing: Lessons from Elm Tree Mews, visit the Joseph Rowntree Foundation at www.jrf.org.uk/ publications


Blueprint for UK Construction Skills 2010 to 2014, visit the Construction Skills Network at www.cskills.org/ supportbusiness/businessinformation/csn


Building the Future Today, visit the Carbon Trust at www. carbontrust.co.uk/publications


UK government departments: www.decc.gov.uk www. communities.gov.uk www.bis.gov.uk


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also need to be skilled in low carbon construction, as will a significant proportion of the existing 2.3m people presently employed. Clearly there is presently a vast gap between the


government’s ambitions to make dramatic cuts in UK carbon emissions and their understanding of the range and quantity of new skills that will be required to deliver these cuts. This represents a huge challenge for both construction businesses and training providers. Government’s failure to recognise the need for


such a vast expansion in low carbon skills is largely due to the industry’s own lack of understanding in this area. The sector skills councils are making some inroads into filling this knowledge gap, but they only address their specific areas and so lack an overview of the challenge.


There’s a vast gap between


government ambitions on making carbon cuts and their understanding of the new skills that will be required to deliver on this


Work by SummitSkills, the sector skills council for building services, has identified that the growth in low carbon skills is predominantly related to training on the installation of specific technologies such as micro- generation. Furthermore, as the industry has not itself identified


the skills required to address low carbon construction, the institutions and educational establishments are not sufficiently geared up to provide new skills. Whilst the accreditation bodies that represent the professional institutions – CIBSE and the RIBA – promote sustainability, the specific design and analytical skills that are essential to achieving cost-effective low carbon designs are rarely covered in university courses. During a discussion at a recent CIBSE council


26 CIBSE Journal February 2011


meeting, it was felt that at present there are probably not even enough people in the UK industry with sufficient knowledge of low carbon construction to train all of the people now needed to form the new low carbon workforce that we need. Without a clear plan to tackle low carbon in


construction, it is little wonder that, to date, the majority of UK government funding for low carbon skills and training has been focused on supporting industrial approaches. Moreover, these approaches almost exclusively address the supply side of the equation, such as carbon capture and storage and off-shore wind power – which are some of the most expensive ways of reducing carbon emissions compared with energy conservation in the built environment. To try to address this gap, CIBSE, together with the


Royal Academy of Engineering and the University of Bath, is presently engaged in a skills survey of the construction industry. The survey, to be conducted by Ipsos MORI, aims to establish the extent of skills that are presently available to deliver low carbon construction and the additional skills that will be required to deliver our ultimate commitment. This is the first time that such a comprehensive


survey has been attempted, and the results should be of great value in determining future directions for institution policy, training and education and to inform government policy on the low carbon built environment. The survey will be sent to all practices registered in the


CIBSE Directory, CIBSE Patrons and a range of other consultants and contractors. If you receive a survey questionnaire from Ipsos MORI in the next couple of months, please do make an effort to provide a complete and accurate response. If you don’t receive a questionnaire, but have specific experiences relating to low carbon skills which you think should be included, please contact the author at the email address below. The better the quality of the responses we receive, the more persuasive will be the arguments that we can put to government to support the vital work of upskilling our workforce. l


Doug King is principal of King Shaw Associates doug@kingshaw.co.uk


www.cibsejournal.com


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