The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) commissioned CITB and Whole Life Consultants to analyse the impact that MMC could have on upcoming workforce needs. “Limited information is available on the impact on MMC on the overall workforce skills requirements,” CITB said.
The report - The impact of modern methods of construction on skills requirements for housing – reveals that increased use of MMC could reduce labour requirements from an additional 195,000 workers (by 2025) to around 158,000.
For the research, CITB looked at changes to the workforce for panelised and volumetric offsite home building. It used opinions from industry experts involved in MMC housebuilding to quantify the effect on labour demand from delivering a typical home using MMC. The results were used to calculate the change in workforce demand resulting from different levels of uptake of MMC.
The report found that an increased adoption of volumetric MMC could particularly aid a reduction in the number of additional workers needed.
A scenario of high levels of MMC (50% of housing output), indicated that 80,000 skilled trade and manual workers would be based offsite, CITB said.
The research also revealed various challenges that the industry faces, including the need in the short term to grow and develop workers to deliver homes using current construction methods, and in the medium to longer term to maintain onsite workers while growing a workforce for MMC delivery.
“There is also the need to upskill existing workers to cover the site management, integration, onsite placement and assembly that will be increasingly required for MMC,” CITB said.
