The UK has grand plans when it comes to transport infrastructure development, but insufficient numbers of skilled workers to make them a reality. Industry experts have sounded a stark warning that, without urgent action, the brakes could be slammed on major infrastructure projects in the relatively near future. From HS2 to large-scale improvements to road networks, huge schemes could be threatened by a national skills shortage of up to 100,000 workers by 2020: the equivalent of two-thirds of the British Army.
Both government and industry have devised strategies to ease recruitment stress as pressure is felt across rail, roads, airports and ports. In 2015, Crossrail chairman Sir Terry Morgan was appointed by the secretary of state for transport to develop a transport infrastructure skills strategy. Published in January, it included recommendations to create 30,000 new apprenticeships by 2020, upskill the existing workforce in new technologies, improve diversity and promote engineering and transport as career choices for “the brightest and best”. Lessons were drawn from the likes of the Olympic Delivery Authority as well as from Crossrail.
Above all, says Morgan, the strategy must be sustainable. “With a project like Crossrail, we have a responsibility to look at it as more than just a railway. It is also a huge opportunity to invest in our people. We made an early decision that for every £3m of taxpayers’ money spent we would employ an apprentice and set ourselves an objective of 400 apprentices by 2018.”
Apprenticeship targets were written into contracts with those in Crossrail’s supply chain, and almost 600 have been created to date. “The very best do it anyway,” says Morgan. “The top contractors invest in their people and the benefits of doing so stare you in the face when you see how these companies work. There are now some very aspirational targets being set and people have the determination to achieve them.”
With so much work in the pipeline, he says, employers have no excuse not to invest in their workforces. “Someone who has worked on Crossrail, HS2, on roads or on the Thames Tideway Tunnel has skills that are highly transferable. There is a new sense of energy and continuity to develop the UK’s skillset. We just need to stay on this track.”
Poised for launch once the government reaches a decision about the airport’s expansion, is the Heathrow Skills Taskforce. This independent education and skills taskforce will provide research for the airport to invest in programmes that will develop the necessary skills of local young people.
“We want to be prepared,” says the airport’s director of human resources Paula Stannett. “It will ensure we have the right skills in our organisation to build and operate a Heathrow of tomorrow. We want to create a sustainable talent pipeline, reduce unemployment in our local communities and increase diversity across the airport.”
The taskforce will involve 12 bodies – from across the education and employment sector – and will be chaired by former secretary of state for education and employment Lord Blunkett. It will build on Heathrow’s existing work around skills, including Heathrow Academy which for 12 years has helped thousands into further training as well as into more than 3,000 jobs at the airport. More than 76,500 people are employed at Heathrow, the equivalent of one in five jobs in the local area.
Its annual jobs and careers fair attracted more than 6,000 young people and their parents this year, and those contemplating a career at the airport can also step into “Heathrow World”, a virtual airport on the government-backed Plotr careers website. Visitors can explore at the click of a mouse the jobs available and what skills are in demand.
“We have real need around civil engineering, project management, IT and technology,” says Stannett, “so we focus on STEM subjects when young people come to visit the airport on our educational programmes. We ask year eight children to design robots to move things around the airport for example, exposing them to the sort of work they might not even necessarily be aware exists. We’ve always done a lot around skills, but the taskforce will turbocharge our efforts. We need to be more proactive, at Heathrow and as a country.”
Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, whose members collectively employ 400,000 people, released a report in July highlighting the mismatch between supply and demand of skilled labour in transport. It analysed a possible expansion of Heathrow, calculating that going down this route would increase the number of workers required on infrastructure projects in London by a quarter. The airport would require a “peak workforce” of 13,300 people in 2023, were expansion to go ahead, it found.
“The data suggests that there are enough young people interested in training for a career in the sector,” found the report, “but they are not being guided down the right paths, potentially because of a lack of training provider and employer collaboration to ensure the right industry-led provision is available.”
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Heathrow, sponsor of the transport hub
