Skills shortage deepens; services hit hard

A skills gap was a reported by 45% of building services firms, with all types of construction professional services firms – including mechanical, electrical, construction and architectural - reporting difficulties in recruitment.

Between 40 and 53% reported that they had hard-to-fill vacancies.

Also, 74% of all firms reported that job applicants were likely to lack technical, practical or job-specific skills. The result is an increased workload for staff and more use of well-skilled and experienced temporary or freelance staff.

Further concerns surrounded a lack of problem solving skills, general communication and team-working ability.

The results are no surprise, said Samantha McDonough director of policy at CIBSE. “I think we have to accept that job applicants may be lacking technical, practical or job-specific skills especially if they are fairly fresh out of the education system. Certainly in building services we rely on graduates from related engineering disciplines and then supplement their general skills with those required of the services engineer. This is a discipline that is honed ‘on the job’; and CIBSE’s new flexible learning scheme aims to address that need by working in partnership with companies to provide the required training that can be delivered in house to the requirements of the employee.”

Other findings of the skills survey were:

- Between 50 and 66% of all firms, from small to large, had staff competency problems in the past year;

- Half of firms believed that the quality of part-qualified recruits had decreased over the past three years;

- More then half of firms expect to have recruitment problems in the coming year, with 70% putting this down to simply a shortage of applicants;

The skills issue is serious, said Mark Way, CIC director of skills. “The current skills shortages will be heightened by the fact that 20 of most professionals across firms will be retiring in the next 20 years. Student numbers on built-environment courses have dropped 28% since 2003/04. The industry is struggling to attract high calibre young professionals into the sector.”

McDonough noted that at graduate level a big problem is losing students of science, technology, engineering and mathematics to unrelated fields like finance because rewards are so much better. She urged firms to “think outside the box a bit” and take the most enthusiastic candidates whose qualifications and experience make the best. “Don’t be afraid to invest in training and development”.

Results of the skills survey, which the CIC will be publish in full later this winter, have come at the same time as their survey of professional services.

Fee income taken in by all construction professional service firms was £13.9 billion, a 4% rise since the last survey in 2001/02. However, there are 20% more people in the sector, resulting in an actual drop of 13% for an individual fee earner.

Building services engineering firms accounted for 7% of £13.9 billion fee income.

Civil and structural firms took in 8%, architecture took in 11%, quantity surveying 14% and project management 6%. The largest portion of fee income was taken by multi-disciplinary firms, accounting for 49%.

Around 270,000 people are employed by the 27,950 construction professional service firms, up from 23,500 in 2001/02. Only 2% of firms employ more than 50 people and of all employees, 77% are male.