Of the many c h a l l e n g -es facing the construction sector, show-ing young

people how creative the in-dustry can be is a huge one.

The shortage of relevant digital skills, the need for more young people to enter the sec-tor and addressing diversity and equality issues were all heavily featured topics in the latest Construction Manage-ment Summit in Croke Park.

With more than 50,000 construction companies on the island of Ireland and some 47,000 of them SMEs, the lack of talent in the industry has affected their ability to deliver projects on time. The presi-dent of the Construction In-dustry Federation (CIF) Pat Lucey, highlighted how much this skills shortage is holding back construction companies in Ireland.

“Construction companies across Ireland are experienc-ing difficulties recruiting qual-ified, experienced and even entry-level workers across disciplines,” he said. “The CIF and other organisations have recently identified skill shortage as a major barrier to cost-effective construction.”

The lack of young people entering the industry is one major concern, with the av-erage age of those working on construction projects around the world ranging from 45 to 65, according to the European operations manager at DPS Engineering, Richard Casey.

To address this, the CIF is running a national awareness campaign this year to show this demographic that the construction industry is more than just bricks and mortar.

“Our research has shown that young people are open to a career in construction and that there is a misperception that the industry is all bricks and no clicks,” Lucey said. “In other words, young people have no idea of the creativi-ty that’s in our industry, they think that it’s all muddy boots and building sites.”

However, he said there was cause for optimism. He recently attended the National Skills Final in the RDS. Taking place over three days and fea-turing 25 apprenticeship dis-ciplines such as bricklaying, carpentry, welding, painting and decorating, and plaster-ing it was the first time the competition was carried out for the public to see.

The enthusiasm shown by participants and attendees was a key factor in its success, with, Lucey said, “busloads

of students from secondary schools” coming to the event.

“There was something for everyone . . . it was an uplifting event. Only students have that openness for opportunity that you saw there.”

The other area the construc-tion industry needs to tackle is the lack of women taking up careers in it. Roughly 5.5 per cent of people in the in-dustry are women, said Shane Dempsey, director of commu-nications for CIF; and Lucey said it was an area where little progress has been made.

“Recently, we had a bril-liant Women In Construction conference, but as I was lis-tening to the contributions on the day, I realised I had heard very similar conversations at a meeting I was at six or seven years ago with male contrac-tors,” he said.

“[We’re having the] same conversations, and yet we ha-ven’t really changed in six or seven years: it’s all too slow. The reward is that you’ll be better organised, make better decisions and you won’t have to work as hard, so why don’t we do it?”

Meeting demandThe continued shortage of housing to meet demand also featured heavily. According to Kieran McQuinn, research professor for the ERSI, it will probably be two to three years before comple-

tion levels meet the demand of the Irish housing market.

“It’s begun to pick up in the last few years, with fig-

ures in 2018 suggesting it’s in the region of 18,500 units,” McQuinn said. “Our expecta-tion for 2019 is that it will be in the region of 23,500 units, growing possibly up to around 28,000 or 29,000 in 2020.

“For structural demand, that figure is around the region of 30,000 to 35,000 per annum, the number of housing units required to meet the demand of the Irish housing market. We think it will be two to three years before we start to meet the structural demand with actual completion levels.”

While there is a big gap to close, there are significant opportunities to address it through a mixture of digital skills and new methods of production. One potential solution is modular housing: building houses in factories, breaking them up into mod-ular form, then transporting them to the site where they can be pieced together.

The head of manufactur-ing and innovation at McAvoy Group, David Clark, said the major benefit of this method wasn’t through cost or materi-al efficiencies - it had to follow the same building specifica-tions for a house - but through saving time.

A traditional housing proj-ect would take 22 months to complete, while taking a modular approach would see the same project completed in 12 months.

The reason is that certain processes can be completed simultaneously instead of

the linear process traditional building goes through. Once it’s transported to the site, it can be built in a day.

The scheme is still in the pilot stages - one of its recent projects was the Joymount scheme in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim which saw 12 houses, three bungalows and 25 apart-ments built through modular housing - but anyone expect-ing a future where houses will be manufactured like cars will be left disappointed.

“Ultimately people want us to get to [where car man-ufacturers are] but there’s a subtle difference between this type of industry and the construction industry,” said Clark.

“We don’t have continui-ty and assurance of pipeline the way true manufacturing really has.

“When a car manufacturer sets out to create a new mod-el or new line, they know for certain how many units they’re going to manufacture. That allows them to gear up their production line in a dif-ferent way.

“Construction isn’t quite there yet. What we’re looking for is that sweet spot: clear ad-vances and advantages we’re going to take from the man-ufacturing side but still main-taining some of the norms and skills from the construction side that we possibly can.”

Even before such methods become the norm, digitalisa-tion alone can greatly help companies save and be more efficient long before the con-struction process even begins. Stephen Bowcott, the chief executive of John Sisk & Son, mentioned that by changing the firm’s approach to a dig-ital-led 15-step process that they followed “religiously”, yielded significant benefits.

“The result is we have had no loss-making project since 2015, and we’re saving €1 mil-lion a year just by following this process of pre-construc-tion,” he said. “We reduced the cost of bidding by using a digital approach to risk man-agement.

“We’ve transformed the way in which we deliver qual-ity checking on-site, recording on-site and safety reporting on-site. We’re using digital field tools for safety inspec-tions, and we’ve saved 125,000 hours in the last year just doing that, which means €3 million in savings.

“On the online inductions, before people turn up on site, that saves 40,000 hours of production on site so produc-tivity starts well in advance on arriving on site.”

Laying the digital foundationJohn Downey, director of sales, EMEA at Topcon; Leslee O’Loughlin, group HR manager at Enterprise Holdings Ireland; Padraig Daly, head of recruitment at JJ Rhatigan Building Contractors; Fergal Murphy, general manager of Kingspan Insulation and Shane Dempsey, communications director at CIF Pictures: Maura Hickey

Kieran McQuinn of the Economic and Social Research Institute

David Clark, McAvoy Group

David Meade, mentalist and BBC broadcaster

David Clark, head of manufacturing and innovation, McAvoy Group with Steve Bowcott, chief executive of John Sisk & Son

Shane Dempsey, communications director, CIF

Pat Lucey, president, CIF

Shane Dempsey of CIF; Eibhlín O’Connor, head of delivery at Clúid Housing Association; Richard Casey, European operations manager at Advanced Technology Group; John Downey, director of sales, EMEA at Topcon Positioning; Emma Hayes, managing director of Digital Built Consultants Ltd

The Sunday Business PostApril 7, 201924 Focus On: Construction Management Summit

COMMERCIAL REPORT

With a marked lack of young people entering Ireland’s construction sector, the CIF is running a national awareness campaign to show that the industry isn’t just ‘all bricks and no clicks’, writes Quinton O’Reilly