Consultancy Currie & Brown’s Construction Market Outlook report, which has tracked construction activity since the start of 2023, indicates that 225,000 more construction workers will be needed by 2027 to meet demand levels for the upcoming pipeline, which was due for release November of last year.
In general, Currie & Brown chief operating officer Nick Gray said, infrastructure programmes and their component projects are all “talent intensive”, meaning the demand for skilled professionals is likely to “outstrip supply.”
He continued: “Compounding the issue is timing. We’re likely to see a jump in activity from 2025 to 2030 as the current pipeline comes to market.”
Which in turn, he believes will have “severe repercussions for infrastructure projects across key sectors” and the UK’s infrastructure pipeline.
The NICP is a pipeline of planned projects and the requirement to deliver them alongside the National Infrastructure Strategy but 2022’s edition has still not been released.
Publication of the new pipeline - the last one was released in 2021 and costed at £650bn - was set back after the political turmoil in the wake of 2022’s controversial mini-budget. The Treasury then further blocked its publication until after the Autumn Statement with promises from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, the document's authors, it will be released in the first half of this year.
Gray said: “The national infrastructure pipeline is crucial to both the economic health of the UK, and improving the entire population’s quality of living through increased access to key services.
“Therefore, the predicted skills shortage revealed in this report should be seen as a wake-up call for the construction industry.
“Avoiding a cliff-edge that threatens the delivery of key projects such as the Transpennine Route Upgrade Programme, works at the Port of Liverpool, and the National Hospitals Programme will demand a collaborative effort on training from players across the industry.
“It will also need robust project management and continuous, close control of cost and risk.”
While inflation is gradually easing, the acute construction skills shortage is predicted to drive an 8.3% increase in labour costs over 2023.
The report also states that a combination of labour-driven and material cost increases could add £900M to estimates for the UK’s infrastructure pipeline in 2023.
A 2023 Infrastructure Cost Predictions report, also compiled by Currie & Brown found the total cost of NICP could reach £483bn by 2026. £84bn of this is said to be the direct result of inflation.
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