The Construction Skills Crisis Is A Capacity Problem

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.

 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.

 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.

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.

 This episode covers:

• Why does construction have an absorption issue rather than an attraction issue
• The three Cs of capability, competency and capacity, and how they interact
• Whether the Building Safety Act is driving genuine change or only a thin layer of compliance
• Gateway 2 and the case for earlier collaboration between design and construction
• Procurement, trust and the debate around cash retentions
• Digital competency passporting and raising standards across the supply chain
• Why doing the job properly should cost less, not more

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.

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.