Government Response to the Low Carbon Construction Innovation and Growth Team
qualifications in anticipation of growth in the retrofitting of existing domestic buildings. The industry is also in active dialogue with DECC regarding the capability of different professions and trades to deliver the future retrofit programme. It is essential that the industry drives the demand for skills to ensure they meet market requirements. In order for this to happen the industry needs to have a clear understanding of the existing status of low carbon construction skills, the scale and specification of future skills needs and clear mechanisms to influence the content and availability of training schemes. The fundamental changes in the construction sector means that we must ensure that future generations of construction professionals and trades people are attracted to the industry and have the basic skills to enable them to enter this employment market.
Leadership The opportunities presented by a low carbon economy can only be captured by UK industry if they have the necessary skills to deliver the products and services required by the market. With over 26 million homes requiring energy efficiency improvements through retrofitting alone the scale of the opportunity is highly significant. The apparent lack of market demand for low carbon solutions, particularly in the domestic retrofit market, is failing to stimulate the industry to increase the number of skilled workers. BESA will deliver a proactive campaign to stimulate SME awareness of the emerging retrofit market, and boosting demand for skills, ahead of Green Deal launch in October 2012.
Future and new skills The IGT concluded that delivering energy efficient buildings or infrastructure requires a system-thinking approach, viewing all systems as part of a whole product. Examples of collaborative working across the supply chain have demonstrated that this can deliver both the whole system thinking that is required and financial efficiency savings to achieve low carbon objectives. The Royal Academy of Engineering and partners are currently undertaking a skills survey of industry and developing an econometric case to establish centres of excellence in building engineering physics, following on from their ‘Engineering a Low Carbon Built environment’ report published in January 2010.
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