More apprentices, please

BCITO is experiencing unprecedented growth in the number of new apprenticeships, but the industry is still woefully short of skilled tradespeople. Plan your labour needs now, so you can capitalise on future business opportunities

In 2014, the BCITO has averaged 106 new sign-ups per week and recently recruited its 9000th apprentice – yet BCITO chief executive Ruma Karaitiana says it’s still not enough to meet growing demand.

“All of the construction trades across the board, from carpentry, to painting, to brick and block laying, are under huge amounts of pressure. All the data says this pressure will continue into the 2020s,” Mr Karaitiana says.

“We’ve come out of a period of recession, where we weren’t building enough houses to maintain normal demand, particularly in Auckland. Then we had the Christchurch earthquakes leading to large rebuild projects, which has only compounded the pressure. The combined effects have resulted in an extremely high demand for skilled tradespeople; we simply don’t have the numbers to meet that demand.”

He says the industry needs to spend more time and resources planning its future skills and labour needs in collaboration with individual businesses.

“Construction businesses need to think about what their business demands are next year and then decide what they can do now to meet those demands.”

While thinking and planning is largely based on individual order books, Mr Karaitiana believes businesses also need to step back and look at future industry trends, which are predicting more growth.

“One of the very real challenges we have is around the population – the construction industry wants the same people that the engineering, farming and technology sectors want. Planning for the construction industry means we need to understand what people might be available in the marketplace, and decide if we need to be more pre-emptive with our training and hiring decisions.”

Apprentice number 9,000

Auckland’s Deniro Larsen-Marsters is the BCITO’s 9,000^th apprentice and a graduate of Te Puni Kokiri’s Maori Cadetship Programme. Active since mid-2013, and in partnership with BCITO, the programme supports Maori tradespeople to become qualified, helping to alleviate demand for skilled workers.

The six-month cadetship is designed to give Maori in full-time employment the skills and experience to prepare them for further training and a career in the construction industry. Cadets are encouraged to transfer into an apprenticeship through BCITO, where they can go on to become qualified tradespeople or project site managers.

If you’re an employer looking for an apprentice, BCITO may be able to put you in contact with a career seeker. Simply call BCITO on 0800 422 486. Through BCITO’s job matching service they can search their database and see if anyone matches your requirements or check out the information available for employers at at www.bcito.org.nz/employers-and-industry/employers.