BBI Services

Posted on 30/03/2022

Mark Worrall, CEO of improvement experts BBI Services, explores the biggest issues UK housebuilding needs to overcome. 

You’re already paying for it – so why aren’t you using it? 

The CITB levy exists to help secure the future of UK construction.  

Every year, it raises hundreds of millions of pounds from businesses across the sector, then uses that money to tackle the biggest skills issues facing the industry. 

And let’s face it – while housebuilding has weathered a tumultuous few years a lot better than many parts of the economy, there’s still no shortage of challenges lying ahead of it. 

So here is my list of the key obstacles and pinch points the sector needs to negotiate – and how both CITB funding and BBI Services can help you overcome them. 

1. Skills 

The housebuilding sector has been grappling with the skills shortage for years. It’s only recently, though, that the shortage has begun to look more like a skills crisis. But we have the skills, we just need to expand the capacity. 

We’re all very familiar with the long-term trend – UK construction is ageing. More than a fifth of the workforce (22%) is over 50, and 15% are in their 60s. The pipeline of new recruits is poor.  

But then Brexit came along. According to the Office of National Statistics, there were 2.3 million people working in construction in 2017, and 2.1 million by late 2020 – with a 4% drop in British workers, but a staggering 42% decline in workers from the EU. 

There’s therefore a crucial need to develop our existing workforce to be more productive, and cascade the crucial value adding elements of work to more people. Breaking complex tasks down into standard elements of work will allow us to skill up new entrants swiftly.  

Attracting new people into the industry is key. 

At BBI, this is something we’re particularly passionate about, having welcomed a number of fantastic apprentices into the business in recent years. 

Offsite and MMC are generally seen as being more exciting, attractive career options than traditional bricks and mortar construction – and as these approaches are adopted more broadly and we adopt a more production manufacturing approach it’s likely this will help pull more people into the industry, and retain the talent we’ve got. 

2. Materials  

Covid brought about the biggest supply chain disruption in a generation, with increases in materials costs reaching a 40-year high. 

There were hopes that the situation would ease throughout 2022, but turnaround times for British shipping containers are now the longest in the world, and suppliers face ongoing difficulties due to the cost of fuel. 

That means having visibility of your key supply chains and analysing the flow of people, products and information is more essential than ever.  

Some people believe high performing supply chains have no stock - that’s not true. They have the right products in the right places at the right times, which builds resilience. 

3. Productivity 

Construction has struggled on the productivity front for decades. According to McKinsey, on a global scale, it’s been basically flat since 1994. During the same period, manufacturing’s productivity has nearly doubled. 

In Britain, figures from the Office of National Statistics support this view – productivity in construction, measured by output per job, has only increased 14.8% in nearly thirty years, lagging well behind other sectors. 

That makes embedding the skillsets and processes to improve productivity and quality on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis critically important. We can do this using your organisations CITB levy to fund our modular, practical training programmes. 

We also need to be embracing opportunities for greater use of MMC and offsite construction. Embedding a production mindset in the housing sector will challenge current thinking, improve outdated processes, and build on its existing successes with offsite. 

4. Quality 

The housebuilding sector has come under growing pressure to deliver significant improvements in quality in recent years.  

The New Homes Ombudsman scheme, due to be implemented sometime later this year, will police a new housebuilding industry code of practise. Homeowners unhappy with the quality of a new-build will be able to bring in the ombudsman to review their case. 

Combined with the increased scrutiny construction has been under since the Grenfell tragedy, it’s clear that prioritising quality will become more vital than ever in the months and years ahead. 

Tackling this requires building robust processes that drive a right-first-time culture, and adopting rigorous error-proofing methodologies that can dramatically reduce mistakes.  

By embedding practical problem solving (as opposed to reactive fire-fighting), the industry will drastically improve both quality and safety. 

World-class business and operational improvement 

So how can BBI Services utilise your CITB funding to help? It can give you the tools, training and practical business improvement services to begin to overcome these challenges. 

Really, all four key issues I’ve outlined above are connected. With a shortage of staff, you need to be more productive, so you can do more with less. The same goes for a shortage of materials.  

Doing more with less requires upskilling the people you do have, and embracing innovative new ways of working inspired by trailblazers in other sectors, like manufacturing. 

And to improve quality, you need to challenge and improve every aspect of your operation – your processes, your culture, your supply chain, and so on. 

Our training services have been expertly designed to harness the talent of the people that work for you, ensure you’re constantly identifying opportunities to drive productivity and efficiency, and build continuous improvement into the culture of your organisation, plus utilise your CITB levy pots to support the outlay. 

Typical results include drastic leaps in productivity, months cut off of project times, and millions of pounds in cost avoidance. 

If you’re interested in learning more, don’t hesitate to contact BBI Services today. 

For more information, visit: www.bbiservices.com