Category: Comment
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin
Posted onOnce upon a time, an employee just like you decided that the skills shortage in construction needed tackling. Enough was enough. The skills problem had been a concern for over 20 years, and she’d read that only 10% of construction employers engaged with schools. This employee discussed it with her manager, reached out to a […]
Selling Construction Careers to Disinterested Buyers
Posted onIf you’re a fan of Apple, iTunes or U2, you might remember the backlash prompted by Apple’s decision to install a new U2 album, Songs of Innocence, directly into the library of 500 million iTunes subscribers a couple of years ago. A completely free album. From one of the world’s biggest bands. Installed with no […]
Construction Needs to Stop Raising Awareness Immediately. Here’s Why
Posted on“Raising awareness” doesn’t work. How do I know? Let’s face it: if doing awareness raising talks in schools a couple of times a year was enough, we wouldn’t have a skills shortage, would we? But ‘raising awareness’ is potentially much worse than simply being ineffective. We want to solve the skills shortage. But the metric […]
How Would Coca-Cola Fix the Construction Skills Gap?
Posted onhttps://youtu.be/kr7h8crYAYQ VIDEO CREDIT: This is Coca-Cola’s advert, and nothing about me posting it here implies anything else. All credits, images and copyright remain with them, in perpetuity (they’ve got a big legal team) It’s almost that time of year again when our TV viewing becomes colonised by adverts full of reassuringly predictable depictions of snow, […]
Gimme an E, Gimme a V… EVIDENCE!
Posted onIt’s Summit season in construction. Events are underway, panels are convening, speakers are sharing their ideas and insights. I’ve recently come back from this year’s CIC Construction Industry Summit 2016 – great event, lovely venue, fascinating people, and a broad range of speakers and topics (though I would say that, given that I was one […]
Standing Alone, Collaboratively – a report for CIS2016
Posted onStanding Alone, Collaboratively – a report for CIS2016 At the heart of everything to do within construction and built environment is People. Whether they’re delivering the work, paying for it, or living with the outcomes of it. The information and views in this report are based on research collated at our Built Environment Skills in […]
We’re still fragmented – it’s time to implement a more radical collaboration approach
Posted onConstruction is a robust sector, literally and metaphorically, and we have overcome many challenges before. I can only imagine that this is why we’ve never reached a pain threshold that compels us, as a united sector, to tackle the skills gap. I’m no economist, but rumours of a post-Brexit mini recession (source: Construction News, 27/7/2016) […]
Neil Rudge from Carillion – Paradise Circus Q&A
Posted on[This is an edit from the full length video available here http://www.beskillsinschools.co.uk/bess-at-paradise-circus-with-carillion-open-doors-16/]
My Post-Referendum Plea – Construction Skills Gap
Posted onThe UK has voted in the referendum and we’ve decided to leave the EU. This decision affects us all and time will tell. For construction the significance is immediate. We have struggled with skills shortages for years but now we can no longer just buy those skills in from other places. We have got to […]