Our challenges

Sector Skills Agreement > Our challenges >

ConstructionSkills is working to ensure that the industry - and the country - has the right people with the right skills, in the right place and at the right time through our Sector Skills Agreement (SSA). The construction industry's SSA, negotiated by ConstructionSkills, is a series of agreements between training providers, employers and Government, designed to address the construction industry's current and future skills needs. Find out more about the challenges we are facing in the construction industry.

Construction is a fragmented industry that needs to significantly improve its performance in areas such as health and safety, quality and cost over-runs if it is to compete in the long term. ConstructionSkills is giving the industry the business skills and support it needs to grow, and to improve its profitability.

By 2010, we want a professional workforce that's 100% qualified. Yet many specialist trades are still without formal training courses, increasing numbers of migrants need to be safely integrated into the industry, and over 500,000 skilled construction workers have no formal qualifications. These are the challenges we aim to overcome.

The construction industry is growing rapidly - both in size and sophistication. It will need almost half a million new recruits between now and 2010, and the traditional pool of white, male school leavers simply isn't big enough. ConstructionSkills is working to attract more graduates, more women, older people and ethnic minorities.