Leo Quinn, Balfour Beatty Group Chief Executive and founder of The 5% Club, has called for the construction industry to play its part in addressing the skills crisis post-Brexit.
Founded three years ago, The 5% Club seeks to have its member companies pledge to achieving at least 5% of their employee base consist of apprentices, sponsored students or graduate trainees within 5 years of joining, demonstrating their commitment to training the workforce and addressing the skills shortage. Members include KPMG, Ministry of Defence, Parkwood Leisure and Barrhead Travel.
Writing in his capacity as the Lead of the Construction Leadership Council’s Skills workstream, Leo Quinn commented:
“A statistic recently captured my attention: a quarter of all construction workers in London are from the EU. Post-Brexit, this has significant implications for the construction industry, a sector which has heavily relied on EU workers to fill vacancies where we have been unable to recruit UK talent."
"I welcome the Government’s efforts to address the problem: the apprenticeship levy, the commitment it has shown to investing in the skills of the next generation and its pledge to create 30,000 new apprentices across the road and rail industry by 2020."
However, Quinn warned that the Government can only do so much to solve the problem, saying that the construction industry needed its own pipeline of people with specialist skills for nationally significant projects like HS2 and new nuclear.
He added:
"In my role as Chair of the Skills Stream for the Construction Leadership Council, I am working to ensure that the skills agenda forms a key role in the Government’s Industrial Strategy. This is our chance to help government create the framework that our industry need so we can solve this problem."
"Modern, efficient infrastructure is taken for granted by members of the public. The infrastructure sector must not do the same by assuming there will always be a steady supply of labour."
"Addressing this skills shortage will enable us to deliver major infrastructure projects, protect the economy and enable the UK to compete on a global stage."
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