The Propcast: The Skills Gap: The Urgent Global Need For A Larger Skilled Workforce To Decarbonise Its Commercial Buildings

The Skills Gap: The Urgent Global Need For A Larger Skilled Workforce To Decarbonise Its Commercial Buildings

Mar 28, 2023

In the seventh episode of Season 11 of the Propcast, host Louisa Dickins is joined by Chris Oldham Senior Policy and Programme Manager at City of London Corporation and Hannah Vickers, Chief of Staff at Mace

Episode Highlights:

• What the ‘Skills for Sustainable Skyline Taskforce’ is and the work they are doing
• Why it is unusual to have a Chief of Staff role in the construction industry
• The trends that Hannah has seen within the sector over the last few years
• The workforce engagement campaign that Chris is helping to run to ensure they have the right people in key roles
• Why we need a more joined up approach to engage schools when looking to bring the
future workforce in
• The misconceptions on what a career in the build environment is like
• Creating a clearer path both into the industry and being able to retrain within the industry
• The importance of addressing the skills gap
• The current innovation trends within the sector

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy
• LMRE YouTube Interviews
• PropTech Salary Report, LMRE 2022
• Skills for Sustainable Skyline Taskforce
• Construction Leadership Council
• Women in Construction Tech
• BIM Academy

Shout outs:

• Antonia Soler
• Bola Abisogun

Key Takeaways:

• I began my career as a primary school teacher, which gave me a real interest in how we
can best equip our young people for the careers of tomorrow. - Chris
• We're encouraging the existing workforce for the full project lifecycle of sustainable
buildings to upskill, to reskill with those green skills that we've identified in the research,
and also to attract a large cohort of diverse new entrants from untapped pools of talent,
particularly looking at women, more young people, people from ethnic minority
backgrounds into the build environment. - Chris
• One of the first trends that I came across was how much our productivity improved during
covid. - Hannah
• We are the second highest paying sector in the UK. So if you think about people having
lifelong careers and retraining, you could potentially retrain and come into construction,
but still be as well paid or better paid than you might be in another sector. - Hannah
• I think how we tap into those pools of talent, we need to look at developing a more
flexible approach to work as well, which in practice is probably offering hybrid work. -
Chris
• We're going to need people who can work to those requirements, who can understand
what that means for the construction process. So if you like it's not a hard sell. It's a sort
of requirement to be able to function as a business going forward. So that's why for us, it's
so important. - Hannah

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast ‘The Propcast’ where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation.

About LMRE

LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management.

From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting.

At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.