Construction skills plan needs quick start

4 October, 2018

The action plan for the building industry announced by the Government today sets a tone for decision making that we expect the industry will strongly support, says Geoff Hunt, Chairman of the Construction Strategy Group.

“We can see little reason why the Government cannot quickly implement two cornerstone initiatives that we have urged for some time. These are:

• Subsidies for employers taking in apprentices or trainees

• Preference in major project tendering for bids with trainee programmes.

“The first has been shown under research carried out by the industry training organisation to be more effective than subsidising trainees while the second is, in our view, a no brainer. We have agreed with MBIE in discussion that a training requirement should be included in conditions of tendering for major government projects.”

Mr Hunt said the addition of micro-skills credentials at the tertiary education level would be a significant advancement and further grow the value of site or hub training on large building projects such as those at Auckland Airport and in the downtown Auckland area.

“Further changes to the immigration settings to encourage those with needed skill sets to enter the country would be good step forward. The list of needed skills is long, from engineers, project supervisors and quantity surveyors to builders, designers and trades people”.

“We can’t fill these vacancies rapidly enough through training programmes and local recruitment to meet demand when thousands are needed over the next five years if infrastructure provision and new housing needs are to be met”.

“Let’s rapidly translate the plan into action. We expect that industry will strongly support these initiatives”.

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