The Construction Skills Crisis Is A Capacity Problem

<p>Construction’s skills crisis may be less about attracting new people and more about the industry’s inability to absorb, develop and make effective use of them.</p><p> In this episode of Behind the Built Environment, David Frise, Chief Executive of BESA, speaks with Mark Farmer, founder of CAST Consultancy and author of the landmark Modernise or Die report.</p><p> Almost ten years after the report was published, Mark reflects on how much construction has genuinely changed and why its traditional labour model continues to struggle.</p><p>The conversation challenges the assumption that the industry simply has a shortage of people and argues that it has an absorption problem, a competence problem and, ultimately, a capacity problem.</p><p> This episode covers:</p><p>• Why does construction have an absorption issue rather than an attraction issue<br>• The three Cs of capability, competency and capacity, and how they interact<br>• Whether the Building Safety Act is driving genuine change or only a thin layer of compliance<br>• Gateway 2 and the case for earlier collaboration between design and construction<br>• Procurement, trust and the debate around cash retentions<br>• Digital competency passporting and raising standards across the supply chain<br>• Why doing the job properly should cost less, not more</p><p>As the Building Safety Act continues to reshape expectations around competence and accountability, the industry faces a choice between genuine cultural change and box-ticking compliance.</p><p>This episode explains why capacity, rather than headcount alone, is the measure that matters, and what needs to change across procurement, regulation, and training to close the gap.</p>