Question: You are holding a conference next week with Summitskills - what is the event about?

Peter Lobban: The aim of the conference is to achieve change in the investment in and training of skills in construction. It is part of the development of a sector skills agreement (SSA) for construction and it will identify ways to move forward with the industry on the skills agenda.

Question: What is the sector skills agreement?

Peter Lobban: As a pathfinder sector skills council (SSC), ConstructionSkills has been given the responsibility of drafting one of the first sector skills agreements. For the past year we have been identifying the main skills needs in our industry and agreeing with employers the sorts of things we can do to address them.

The SSA is, basically, a deal between us, the employers and the government which commits us all to invest more in training and skills for the construction industry.

The government has said if we can show that employers are more committed to this cause, then they will undertake to ensure that the supply side (the government-provided education and training) responds to meet the industry’s needs.

Question: What are the major skills and training challenges that have been highlighted by the SSA?

Peter Lobban: We have got three major areas, the first is to improve performance and that can include safety, competitiveness or productivity and it is about the industry working in a much more integrated way. It has been a very fragmented industry - split up between design and production and between main contractors, subcontractors and specialist suppliers. The idea is to pull the whole of the process together into one integrated supply chain, so that is the first element.

The next issue is that the existing workforce has often been recruited in informal ways, so we haven't traditionally required qualifications. We have a big initiative underway to qualify the whole workforce and to give them construction skills certification scheme (CSCS) cards. Clients can actually demand to see these cards to be sure that they are taking on good quality trades people. We have already qualified over half a million people and we need to do about the same again, so that is another big challenge.

The final challenge is to recruit enough new people to the industry to meet the huge demand there will be for construction. In order to meet government aspirations for the building of schools, hospitals, transport infrastructure and housing we need hundreds of thousands of people to join our industry at every level from apprenticeships to graduates.

Question: What will the benefits of a successful SSA be?

Peter Lobban: We will have a professional industry, fully skilled and delivering what customers require.

The benefits for society will be that buildings will be constructed quickly, on time, on budget and to a high standard.

Question: Are you looking for support from individual companies and organisations to deliver this plan?

Peter Lobban: Yes, we are looking for the support of the whole industry – large and small companies. We need everyone to address the fragmented structure of the industry and we are trying to pull together the whole supply chain so that everybody starts working together and we can address the skills issues together.

Question: What role will ConstructionSkills have in delivering this plan?

Peter Lobban: ConstructionSkills is the sector skills council for the construction industry and is responsible for negotiating the sector skills agreement with the industry and supply side partners and then monitoring and evaluating its effectiveness.

ConstructionSkills is a partnership between CITB-ConstructionSkills, construction industry council, which covers the professional consultancies as well as the contracting side of the industry, and CITB Northern Ireland – so the ConstructionSkills remit is pan-industry and UK wide.

Question: Where will the financial backing come from?

Peter Lobban: We see the industry putting in about £200 million a year over the next five to six years which is almost a billion pounds. We are also looking for the government to be funding training to about the same extent.

Question: What can the government do to help deliver this plan?

Peter Lobban: Government has a very important role to play on two counts. As a client for the construction industry, it accounts for almost half the output of the construction industry and has huge public spending plans. We believe that to support Best Value procurement and create a level playing field, central and local government funded construction contracts should require appropriate training and qualified workforces.  

And then government is also driving the sector skills council network and sector skills agreements.  We understand that if we can demonstrate increased employer commitment to training and skills to address our challenges as an industry, we can expect the government to secure the necessary response from the supply side – eg funding from the Learning and Skills Council and appropriate training provision in colleges and universities.

Question: Do you currently get support from the government?

Peter Lobban:  The government has been supporting us through the development of the sector skills agreement, and further government support will be required as the deals are firmed up.

In our draft SSA we have identified 11 key conditions that the government would need to broker with the supply side for our plans to become a reality. Certainly the noises that Charles Clarke, Patricia Hewitt, and Ivan Lewis have been making are very positive.

We are hopeful that it will be successful and the government will honour the deal in terms of the sector skills agreement and give the industry its support.

Question: What would your message to government be?

Peter Lobban: I think this is a win-win situation. I think the sector skills agreement is an excellent way to make sure that the construction industry is world class - high performing and competitive and with the skills to deliver client satisfaction on every project.