Worsening skill shortages will be “the challenge of the decade” for Australia’s under-pressure construction industry, a new report has warned.

Construction job vacancies have increased by a massive 80 per cent since late 2019.  It is forecast that by 2023 there will be more than 100,000 unfilled roles in the sector.

“This will be almost 50 per cent greater than the number of people who are expected to be qualified to fulfil them,” global consultancy Arcadis said in its latest construction costs index report.

Arcadis’ Executive Director of Cost and Commercial Management, Matthew Mackey, said a severe shortage of construction workers will present a huge challenge to the industry in the future

“Construction has largely recovered from the pandemic, but that recovery is coming with an inflationary cost,” he said.

“Skills shortages will only get worse, and this will become the challenge of the decade.

Effects on Construction Timeframes

Meanwhile, delays on major construction projects have blown out, more than doubling from 100-plus days before the pandemic to more than 200 days now, new analysis has found.

Across both post and pre-pandemic developments, nine out of every 10 projects are delivered late with almost two-thirds of projects late by two months or more, according to analysis from construction software provider nPlan.

At the extreme, almost one in four projects are delivered more than 250 days late, while almost one in 10 are delayed by more than a year, it found.

The labour shortage is partly to blame for rising rates of insolvency in the construction industry, with a tough journey ahead, says Brad Walters, Head of Product and Rating Services at Equifax.

Labour shortages have coincided with months of inclement weather, supply chain issues, interest rate rises and high demand.

“One in five businesses are constrained and finding it tough to have enough employees to continue to service current operations,” he says.

“The reality is that the industry is continuing to grapple with the same challenges that we’ve seen in the past, and that’s causing ongoing delays to projects as a result of the continuing supply chain disruptions.”

 

Source: https://www.theurbandeveloper.com/articles/construction-labour-shortages-weigh-down-industry

Source: https://www.theurbandeveloper.com/articles/skills-shortages-challenge-of-the-decade-for-australia-s-construction-industry