The UK Construction Industry Council’s (CIC) recently published Professional Services Survey says that 12,000 competent UK construction professionals, such as engineers, architects and surveyors, will have to be recruited annually to meet demand as major projects such as the London Olympics gather speed.

The UK Construction Professional Sector (CPS) currently employs 270,000 people across 28,000 companies. This number of professionals will have to be augmented with an additional12,000 competent new professional recruits every year to meet project deadlines spearheaded by the London Olympics. The CIC says added pressure is being put on the industry because 20 per cent of current CPS professionals could retire in the next 10 years.

Parallel research by CIC reveals that:

• 70 per cent of CPS firms believe that a shortage of recruits is the biggest problem facing the £13.9 billion industry.
• A worrying 74 per cent of CPS firms have found that job applicants are likely to be lacking the necessary technical skills.
• Over 50 per cent of all CPS firms anticipate recruitment difficulties over the next year
• And with student numbers on Built Environment courses having dropped by 28 per cent since 2003/4, the industry is struggling to attract high caliber young professionals in to the sector.

All CPS firms reported some difficulties in recruitment, with between 40 per cent and 53 per cent reporting ‘hard to fill’ vacancies. The main cause of recruitment difficulties was a low number of applicants with required skills, resulting in the majority of firms having to increase workloads for other staff.

CPS employers believe that the quality of recruits who are either graduate level, part-qualified members of professional institutions or trained to other levels has declined. The skills gap is most pronounced in Building Services Engineering firms.