The Infrastructure Podcast: Episode 147

Guest: Matt Cannon, Chief Executive of the Clancy Group

Building a skilled workforce

In today's podcast we talk about skills and the challenge facing contractors to build a productive workforce fit for the future. 

The UK is in the middle of a huge moment for infrastructure. Government has committed to a long-term national infrastructure strategy, has published a £725 billion pipeline, and repeated its commitments to “build for the future”. 

All this points towards a sector finally moving beyond decades of stop-start investment.

Yet on the ground, delivery remains under pressure. Projects are competing for the same finite pool of people. Productivity stubbornly lags behind other sectors. 

And despite tens of thousands of people entering construction-related training each year, too many never translate that training into long-term jobs.

Well my guest today is Matt Cannon, chief executive of major contracting group Clancy, someone who understands and faces this challenge - this fundamental tension - day in day out. So I hope he will give us something of a reality check.

Because while the industry is being asked to scale at pace, modernise how it builds, adopt digital tools, and deliver safer, more efficient outcomes, it continues to operate in a system that too often lacks long-term certainty. 

Short forward order books, fragmented procurement, and a skills system that still leans heavily on supply rather than real demand continue to undermine confidence to invest in people.

In reality, before the industry can build a larger, more productive workforce, it must first build a safe one - getting more people on site today, working competently, consistently, and with confidence. 

Apprenticeships and long-term training programmes are critical, but they take time to mature, and they rely on employers believing that work will still be there in two, five, or ten years’ time.

So the question is no longer whether skills matter - it’s whether the UK’s infrastructure system is set up to support the workforce it says it needs. And of course, what needs to change to turn ambition into delivery.

Let’s find out more from the coal face of contracting 

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