In this guest blog for Skills Federation, Andrew Hockey , Chief Executive of Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB) and a trustee of Skills Federation, describes plans to recruit 100,000 more construction workers.
The Construction Skills Mission Board will be critical in ensuring we have the workforce needed to meet the challenges we face in construction and engineering construction over the coming years.
The Board, which was launched at the end of June, has a mission to recruit 100,000 additional construction workers each year by the end of this Parliament.
I was pleased that the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB) was invited to join the Board. As CEO, I represented the engineering construction industry (ECI) at the inaugural meeting, chaired by Mark Reynolds, Co-Chair of the Construction Leadership Council.
The meeting brought together senior government figures, including Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall, Skills Minister Baroness Jacqui Smith and Minister for Industry Sarah Jones, alongside industry leaders and fellow CEOs.
The Board will develop specific initiatives and actions to deliver its mission, while supporting the Government to shape, develop and deliver skills policy.
The actions will focus on five key areas to drive increased recruitment, which are:
- confidence to employ and invest;
- clear new entrant pathways;
- access to provision and support to train;
- funding that works; and
- reliable and rewarding careers.
Engineering construction is key to the Government’s growth and skills goals and project certainty is vital to encourage contractors to invest in new talent.
Government can provide project certainty to unlock final investment decisions, while procurement and regulatory levers also have an important role to play in incentivising skills training.
Both ITBs have a key role to play in training new entrants. For instance, we are helping to pump prime new talent through our Scholarship and Work Ready programmes, and as part of our new 2026-2030 strategy we will be developing additional programmes to support and incentivise companies to take on trainees ahead of project need.
But only through a collaborative approach can we help deliver, grow and maintain a skilled workforce fit for now and the future.
Enhanced collaboration is already underway between the ECITB and the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) on specific areas including infrastructure across Great Britain, increasing trainers and assessors, clean energy jobs and skills passporting.
We also need to deliver projects that enable workforce transition like the ECITB’s pilot Wind Turbine Technician cross-skill programme which supports two-way deployments across oil & gas and wind infrastructure.
The Industrial Strategy, alongside the Infrastructure Plan, provides vital strategic clarity and direction. It presents a critical opportunity to align training and reskilling efforts with future project pipelines, ensuring workforce readiness as new infrastructure projects come online and clean energy deployment scales.
Read the Government’s announcement on the Construction Skills Mission Board
