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With green blankets covering the buildings and cranes looming darkly overhead, Britain’s commercial building boom doesn’t seem to be much affected by the economic slump. As other industries cut back, the commercial building industry is not doing so, which is resulting in a noticeable shortage of workers to meet the demands of British construction companies.

The shortage of skilled construction workers is most noticeable when examining last year’s figures. 13,000 building projects were launched in 2007, and approximately 87,600 labourers were required to support these projects. The expertise deficiency is therefore widespread, both in the trade and non-trade. The highest annual requirements of the general trade are the electrical trade and wood trade, and there is also a high demand for building specialists and brick layers. The biggest requirements among non-trades include business processing managers, construction managers, professional and technical staff, architects, and office-based IT-recruits.

These shortages are mainly a consequence of three variables: 1) the demands of the building boom; 2) the decline in the number of East Europeans in the trade; 3) the misconceptions about construction work that recruiters have.

The first reason, which was discussed previously, is relatively obvious – the more construction projects there are, the more recruits that need to be hired to do the job.

As the British trade has been largely dominated by highly-skilled Polish workers over the years, the impact of Poland’s recent economic boom has driven many Poles back to their home country, which is a big loss for British construction companies.

The third reason that the UK is experiencing a worker shortage is due to recruiters’ misconceptions of what construction work actually entails. Many job hunters perceive builders as hard-hats limited to a construction site, while in reality, a lot of construction jobs are often managerial or office-based.

A variety of steps have been taken to bridge the recruitment gap in the building trade. One way this is achieved is through encouraging diversity in the work place. Instead of just hiring white males with degrees in mathematics, some companies are looking beyond traditional recruitment pools and encourage women and various ethnic groups to work in construction. The National Association of Women in Construction is one of the organisations that takes this approach and by doing so, is not only allowing for fresh ideas to be brought into the construction industry, but cultivates diversity in the workplace.

A way of increasing the number of graduates in the construction trade is by getting children interested at a young age, as the Sustainable Employment Legacy Forum and Inspire Scholarships programs have done. They not only organise trips for children to visit construction sites, but they also offer student funds, apprenticeships, and training courses to people in the poorer outskirts of London, providing younger generations with great initiatives to join the industry.

Another approach to bridging the employment gap is to change the way in which the building industry is viewed. By educating people to expand their view of the trade and teaching people that construction is more than hard hats and light-reflecting mesh jackets, more individuals might start to see construction as a job for them.

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