Industry Overview
Comprising two main sub-sectors – Clay Building Products and Precast Concrete Products – the UK Building Products industry plays a key role in the UK’s construction industry, supplying essential products including, bricks, blocks, roofing, tiles, pipes, pavers and more.
The Building Products industry comprises around 3,000 UK workplaces, employing around 50,000 employees.
Around 90% of the industry employs fewer than 50 employees; with 63% employing less than 10.
This industry has its largest presence in the North of England and in the Midlands with more than 80% of the total workforce based in England.
Proskills works with employers from the Building Products Industry to help businesses improve their productivity and competitiveness through skills training. Extensive research and comprehensive employer consultation has identified a need to upskill current and future workforces to enable businesses in this industry to address the challenges they currently face. In particular as the current economic climate forces many businesses to make staff cut backs, there is an increasing need for the remaining workforce to multi-skill.
Skills training is required to help business address the following:
- Skills shortages that are particularly prevalent among front line staff, technical staff as well as at managerial and supervisory level
- To help businesses ride the storm of the current economic climate and credit crunch, particularly with respect to the downturn in the construction trade
- The need to meet constantly changing consumer demands and preferences
- To support legislation compliance on Health and Safety as well as Environmental Management
- To improve efficiencies by tightening up processes to tackle the issue of rising energy costs and the need for more energy-efficient machinery and processes
- To drive business performance improvements to increase competitiveness particularly within the UK market
- To keep up with technological advances