Sector skills will aid industry performance

A professional industry, fully skilled and delivering what customers require will be the end result when the sector skills
agreement (SSA) is fully developed.
That is the view of Peter Lobban, chief executive of CITB-ConstructionSkills, who was speaking at the Altogether Stronger training conference in London last week.
At the event, Lobban outlined three major skills and training challenges that the SSA must address.
n The first is to improve performance, including safety, competitiveness and productivity. That, says Lobban, can be achieved by the industry working in a more integrated way.
nÊSecond, the industry must ensure that there is a fully qualified workforce.
nÊThe final task is to recruit enough new people to the industry to meet the huge demand there will be for construction.
"We have already qualified 600,000 people and we need to
do about the same again, so
that is another big challenge," he said.
Lobban said both large and small companies can play their part. "We are trying to pull together the whole supply chain so that everybody starts working together."