The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) has set itself the target of updating standards to reflect digital skill needs by 2025. The target is set out in the CITB’s strategic plan for 2021-2025.
The CITB will work with industry to understand how it is seeking to improve performance and to define the competencies required to achieve that. It will work with employers to create and develop models of competence (knowledge, skills and behaviors) and provide more clarity on what is needed for existing and new skills, such as digital. They believe that it will help ensure that training is of high quality and transferable.
BIM+ quoted the CITB as saying that the increasing influence of new approaches to construction, such as digital technology and the increasing impact of manufacturing on construction, will continually alter the skills needed. In the short-term, many employers will lack the confidence to make significant skills investments, such as in apprenticeships or in up-skilling their workforces.
It noted that in the short-term (2021-22) there will be a growing need for digital analytics and data analysts to enhance productivity.
The CITB highlighted the current context and that its plans must be flexible as a result and mentioned that their preliminary Construction Skills Network forecasts suggest that construction employment will fall from 2.7 million in 2019 to 2.4 million in 2021, before recovering slowly back to about 2.7 million in 2025. However, there are big risks to these forecasts. Not only is the outlook uncertain but also the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and Self-employed Income Protection Scheme imply that it’s currently unclear how many people are working in construction.
