SPEECH BY SIR MICHAEL LATHAM, DL, CHAIRMAN, CITB,

AND DEPUTY CHAIRMAN, WILLMOTT DIXON LTD,

TO THE MASTER CRAFT SCHEME DINNER,

LONDON, 30 APRIL 2003

It is a greatpleasure to be with you this evening, at the launch of the Master CraftCertificate Scheme. Thank you very much for your excellent hospitality. I am also delighted to share the speakersplatform with Sir John Egan this evening. Sir Johns major report launched thewhole Rethinking Construction process, and he is about to begin a review ofprofessional skills in the built environment sector. It is very fitting that he has launched the Master Craft Awardscheme tonight.

CITB is very pleased to supportthis excellent scheme. Recognising theimportance of skills is crucial to the future of our industry. Woodcrafts require many years of practice toperfect and often produce long-lasting, highly visible and much appreciatedwork.

By celebratingwoodcraft skills, the Master Craft Award Scheme will give skilled carpenters,joiners and shopfitters something further to work towards throughout theircareers. I hope it will encourage greater numbers of young people to decide totrain in a hands-on skill. It shouldalso give the public much-needed reassurance that they can find qualifiedtradespeople with excellent skills.

Ensuring we have enough peoplewith the right skills to carry our industry into the future is the singlebiggest challenge we face. The industryneeds to recruit 76,000 people a year between now and 2007, and carpenters andjoiners are among the most in-demand occupations.

This is why improving the imageof our industry, recruiting greater numbers of young people into our ranks andensuring we have a fully qualified workforce by 2010 are the key objectives ofthe CITB. Schemes such as the one weare launching tonight are part of the solution. But we still have much to do.

CITB has a number of actionplans to address the issue of image and recruitment. We have managed NationalConstruction Week for the last two years, with the focus on attracting youngtalent. We look forward to even greater success with National Construction Week2003, which will run from 8 to 15 October.We have also launched new ads each year as part of our ongoing PositiveImage campaign. The ads appear in youth orientated magazines and websites andare designed to play on the interests of young people namely, sport, music,money, socialising and travel. Surveyshave shown that the target audience, young people, were impressed by the adcampaign and it improved significantly their attitude towards the industry. In2002, we had a 10% increase in the number of young people applying for a placeon our Managing Agency Modern Apprenticeship scheme. Thousands more applieddirect to employers. This is realprogress.

But aside from ad campaigns, weare involved in recruitment, education and careers work all the year round. Wehave 120 Curriculum Centres, with employers, schools, colleges and educationbusiness link organisations heavily involved, to try to get the message over toyoung people. And in my report Constructing the Team, nearly nine years ago,I drew attention to the fact that women and ethnic minorities were seriouslyunder-represented in the construction industry. There is a clear business case for the industry to diversify itsworkforce. We need a construction industry that looks more like Britain, andBritain is not all male and white. This is why CITB has set targets for women,black and Asian people for new entrant starts. We cant afford to ignore morethan 50% of the population in our recruitment policy. Each CITB area office isdeveloping local collaborative projects, known as Step into Construction, intheir area. They are a vital part of our wide outreach.

I am also President of theConstruction Industry Trust for Youth, which works with young people fromdisadvantaged backgrounds to get them started in a construction career. The benefits of being involved in such aproject are two-fold. Young people aregiven the opportunity to change their lives by learning skills and producingwork they can be proud of and we are working together helping to meet theindustrys skills shortages.

The Award Scheme will encourageits Master Craftsmen and Women to act as mentors to younger workers. The importanceof role models to young people cannot be underestimated. CITB often makes use of aspirational rolemodels in our image and recruitment campaigns, both in our ads and schoolvisits.

Effective mentoring bridges apotential gap in the skills of the future workforce. It is not only up to colleges and universities to teach newentrants all the skills they need. Employers also bear responsibility forpassing their skills and knowledge onto our future workforce, whether in acraft, technical or managerial capacity.

Qualifying our currentworkforce is just as much of an issue for CITB as qualifying our futureworkforce. Clients, the Government and the industry Federations are pushing foran all-qualified workforce, certainly by 2010 and possibly earlier. Will weachieve this? I hope so and we mustwork flat out to do so. Half a million people are now qualified, which is veryencouraging. But we need to qualifyanother 500,000 at least if we are to meet the 2010 target.

This is where OSAT comes in. Itis a major industry initiative to get workers qualified, without them evenneeding to leave their sites. CITB has just announced a pilot scheme with theLearning and Skills Council to deliver OSAT via 10 new networks around thecountry. The pilot scheme will aim to qualify 10,000 people by the middle ofnext year. We then hope that OSAT will be rolled out further so that we cantrain and assess far greater numbers over the next five years.

We have been heavily promotingthe CSCS card scheme to the industry. Sometimes I am asked why it is necessaryto register and qualify site operatives if they are already experienced. Butmajor clients, including the government, and contractor groups are increasinglydemanding that all workers on their sites be CSCS-accredited. Their supply chain must be able to provetheir workers competence.

As the expectations of ourclients grow, operatives without the necessary training will be leftbehind. Employers have a responsibilityto ensure that doesnt happen to their employees. I hope employers will reallysupport the Master Craft Award Scheme, because a highly skilled workforce isvital for business.

I cant speak about qualifyingthe workforce without mentioning health and safety. The industrys death andinjury rates have improved over the past 18 months, although this has followeda sudden increase in the number in accidents on site in 2000. We are still behind where we would be, hadthe downward trend we were experiencing in the 90s continued. We all want towork on zero-accident sites and that must be our determined objective. We absolutely owe it to our workers andtheir families to provide safe sites.But there is also a strong business case for doing so. With safer,cleaner sites and a fully qualified workforce, the industry is in a much betterposition to attract high quality new recruits.

If we are to make a differencerather than talk about it, we have to increase our influence. I particularlylook forward to CITB becoming a Sector Skills Council. Since entering thedevelopment phase, following submission of our Expression of Interest lastyear, our comprehensive 18-month business plan is now being worked up before wediscuss it with the Sector Skills Development Agency later this month. Oncethey have considered our proposal, we hope that the Secretary of State willissue a five-year licence to us later this year.

Being a SectorSkills Council will provide us with a stronger voice for employers and place usin a better position to influence key stakeholders, namely government, keyclients and opinion makers. It will also give us greater access to work whichthe government and LSC is doing on key initiatives, such as a review ofnational occupational standards and vocational qualifications and Sir John Egansprofessional skills review. Our aim is to move towards a qualificationsstructure which, whilst not losing its rigour, exhibits a sense of pragmatism.

Schemes such as the Master Craft Award show that ourindustry has recognised the need for change and is taking it seriously. It isexcellent to see so many construction practitioners, especially from the woodand timber trade areas, here this evening, as supporters of this Award Scheme.

Ours is an industry of which we can be proud.A new qualification of Master Carpenters, Joiners and Shopfitters whoare highly skilled and take pride in their work will reinforce our pride. I wish this important Scheme well,congratulate all those involved in devising and promoting it, and send my verybest wishes to all who will seek to achieve this high standard of excellentachievement.