£136m Construction Academy Opens in Salford
Reporter: Tom Rodgers
The National Skills Academy for Construction, which will be based at the Balfour Beatty site at the Salford Royal Hospital, has been officially opened.
The only other contruction skills academies have been opened in Wytheshawe and London, by Balfour Beatty and Bovis Lend Lease respectively.
The skills academy hopes to reverse the current trend - an aging workforce - occurring in the construction industry, by attracting more apprenticeships and giving young people the skills necessary to forge a long-term career in the industry.
Official government figures show that since the early 1990s the construction sector has grown by 20%, but that the number of older workers (60 and over) has more than doubled, and the amount of younger (24 and under) workers has dropped by 27%.
MP for Salford, Hazel Blears, attended the opening. Over the next 3 years the scheme aims to create more than 30 academy-related projects on-site and throughout the UK.
The academy came to fruition through a government initiative designed to drive up the standard of industry training; part of the National Skills Academy programme, which hopes to address the current skill-shortages in the UK.
The Salford site is part of a £136m redevelopment involving Salford Royal Hospital, Balfour Beatty, Haden Building Management, Haden Young and Consort Healthcare.
Blears said: “This project will equip workers with the right experience and skills to fill the gaps in the labour market and help construction workers learn new trades and disciplines, and get on in life.
Finlay Inglis, operations director at Balfour Beatty, said: “By its very nature construction tends to be a hugely fragmented industry. The only place that everyone comes together is on a live construction site, so the fact that training will be focused on-site is very significant.
“Employer-led training is the only way to get it right and I believe that the National Skills Academy for Construction truly recognises this."
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