Shrinking employment getting more critical, consultant warns
A shrinking skilled workforce is the main obstacle to reducing construction costs, according to the latest forecast from Turner & Townsend.
In its spring update, the consultant said the industry needed to focus on retaining and retraining skills with competition for a small pool of qualified workers across the sector causing wages to rise.
T&T said construction鈥檚 share of the UK labour force was currently at a record low with Martin Sudweeks, the UK managing director of its cost management business, adding: 鈥淲e need to ensure we are not taking our focus off those issues which are within our power to solve 鈥� our people problem being one of the most critical.
鈥淗alf a decade on from the disruption of the covid-19 pandemic, year-on-year employment is still shrinking. We need to radically rethink how we attract talent 鈥� looking to a wider set of disciplines, backgrounds and skills that will deliver the modern, digitally-enabled, creative construction workforce of the future.鈥�
The Construction Industry Training Board recently estimated that the average age of a UK construction worker is now over 50.
T&T said tender prices between 2026 and 2029 would stay flat at 3.5% for commercial work while they will be 5% for infrastructure jobs over the same period.
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