The first two episodes of a new podcast have already caught the attention of construction bosses this month, exploring urgent issues around the skills shortages in construction and the best ways to train the new generation. The new ‘Construction Talk’ podcast interviewed Alasdair Reisner, chief executive of the Civil Engineering
CHAS, the supply chain risk management experts, and Causeway Technologies, the largest specialist software provider to the UK construction market, have announced an integration partnership which enables users of Causeway’s connected supply chain network, Tradex, to find fully accredited health & safety compliant contractors. The integration between Causeway’s Tradex platform
The first two episodes of a new podcast have already caught the attention of construction bosses this month, exploring urgent issues around the skills shortages in construction and the best ways to train the new generation. The new ‘Construction Talk’ podcast interviewed Alasdair Reisner, chief executive of the Civil Engineering Contractors Association (CECA), for its first episode, taking a hard look at the skills crisis in construction and the impact of the Construction Leadership Council (CLC) Skills Plan to support the recruitment and retention of talent in the industry in 2022. Alasdair Reisner talks on the podcast about how COVID-19 acted as a catalyst for a new collaborative approach to skills issues: “As an industry we’ve never been able to work collectively. But through the CLC, it’s been the first chance to say ‘look, we’re all facing a problem with talent’ – there’s not a single bit of industry saying no, we’ve got all the talent we need. Our whole industry really struggles to recruit the employees we need, to deliver what looks like a pretty good future,” he says. “It’s crazy that, until last year, there wasn’t a single plan for our industry about how we were going to do that. So I was delighted when we did publish the CLC’s Skills Plan. For the first time we’ve got a skills plan that covers the whole industry, including measures around the attractiveness and culture of the industry, the routes into the industry and the skills for the future.” The interview goes on to talk about the new Government-backed Construction Talent Retention Scheme and Talentview Construction which gets young people into apprenticeships, traineeships and entry roles, as well as exploring the huge impact of major infrastructure projects like HS2, creating 20-year careers and cutting-edge skills that can be exported around the world. “2022 is the year of recruitment,” says Alasdair Reisner. “The skills shortages have got worse. We really have to go out there and sell this industry. People won’t just come to us because we want them to – we have to go out there and market the brilliant opportunities that are opening up to everyone.” Episode 2 of Construction Talk tells the story of Nicola Bird, director of groundworks contractors K W Bell Group and founder of AccXel, the UK’s first industry-led education centre and a multimillion-pound facility established to tackle industry skills shortages. Nicola describes how she set out initially to develop an apprenticeship scheme to help safeguard the future of the family business, but then became motivated to pursue a much bigger project, funded by government and her local enterprise partnership, to build AccXel – the aspirational and high-tech construction skills accelerator centre based near the Forest of Dene. Nicola Bird also talks eloquently on the podcast about the importance of digital skills in construction and the expectations of young people curious about the sector. “They expect that technology to be in our industry,” she says. “The only way we are going to start getting people inspired by our industry is by a quicker introduction into digitalisation, and it will make us more efficient in the long run anyway.” The bi-weekly Construction Talk podcast forms part of a new community that Causeway Technologies is creating for its customers and the wider industry, including a monthly newsletter with six question quick-fire interviews with guest contributors, and plans for community events like roundtables, dinners and other networking opportunities later in the year. The podcast is hosted by Peter Haddock, a well-known voice in construction, and is freely available via both iTunes and Spotify. Peter Haddock says: “It’s great to be working with Causeway Technologies on creating a community that can share ideas, experiences and views on key topics impacting the construction sector now and in the future. Our podcast guests share their passion for how we improve skills development and technology integration, showing us how we can do things differently, collaborate properly and embrace change.” The most recent episode of the podcast features Mathew Ayres, group managing director at the Bennie Group, talking on the theme of “Winning the competitive edge with early technology adoption.” To listen to the first three episodes of the Construction Talk podcast, go to: https://www.causeway.com/construction-talk-podcast Causeway Technologies was established in 1999. Headquartered in Buckinghamshire in the United Kingdom, it serves over 2,500 customers and has over 350 employees. Causeway provides enterprise and cloud software solutions to the construction and infrastructure maintenance industries and spans the full value and supply chain. www.causeway.com
CHAS, the supply chain risk management experts, and Causeway Technologies, the largest specialist software provider to the UK construction market, have announced an integration partnership which enables users of Causeway’s connected supply chain network, Tradex, to find fully accredited health & safety compliant contractors. The integration between Causeway’s Tradex platform and the CHAS database gives Causeway customers sight of CHAS contractors’ health & safety assessments, providing reassurance that they are fully compliant with latest health & safety requirements removing the administrative burden on users needing to perform these compliance checks themselves. The CHAS database holds a live record of all relevant contractor qualifications and certifications and features an alert that notifies members if and when any documents need to be renewed so Causeway Tradex users can also be confident that contractors’ credentials are up-to-date. CHAS Managing Director, Ian McKinnon, comments: “We are really pleased to announce this new agreement with Causeway Technologies which will provide users in the Tradex network with real-time data about the compliance status of their supply chain and in turn increase the visibility of CHAS members.” “The partnership demonstrates our commitment to helping our customers build their businesses and highlights our desire to promote solutions that help make the construction industry more efficient.” Over 170,000 organisations use Tradex, the UKs largest construction connected supply chain network to streamline the supplier accreditation process, and remove manual processes that cause bottlenecks for both Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable teams, especially during this highly disruptive time. Andrew Woolstone, Product Owner at Causeway Technologies says: “The integration of Tradex Supplier Management with CHAS ensures that, for our customers that use CHAS as a trusted accreditation service, the information about their subcontractors that is verified and maintained by CHAS is automatically available and updated within the Tradex platform. This provides a single source of accurate data to ensure real-time health & safety compliance across the whole supply chain.”
