10,000 more people needed to create the highways revolution, says roads minister

Industry facing greatest change for 50 years according to John Hayes ahead of Highways England launch next week. And future contracts will demand a training commitment.

Jackie Whitelaw
23 March 2015

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Launch of Highways England next week and legislative commitment to a long term road strategy thanks to the Infrastructure Act mean “the greatest change the supply chain has faced for 50 years,” roads minister John Hayes has said.

The digital revolution and the internet of things which will allow roads and vehicles to become interconnected are one part of the puzzle facing suppliers, he said; the other is training and developing the estimated extra 30% or 10,000 people need to deliver the £3bn of work a year in the first Road Investment Strategy to 2021 and for those beyond.

“Of course, these contractual (training) requirements will be reflected in the price that Highways England will pay. But it’s far cheaper to invest in rearing home-grown, British expertise now than wait and outsource work to expensive international consultants later.” - John Hayes

“The Road Investment Strategy’ is the greatest change the supply chain has faced for perhaps 50 years,” Hayes said in a speech to a ResPublica event in London. “If the heyday of the road building industry was the years between the 1930s and 1960s, then most of the 30,000 people working in the industry today will have developed their careers in the relatively lean years since the 1970s.

“The road building industry of today will hold almost no corporate memory of the skills required to carry out a far-reaching, decades-long, road investment programme of this kind. So now is the time for the infrastructure supply chain to start assembling the resources, to invest in new techniques and equipment and to recruit and train staff with the ambition to get the job done. That’s no small challenge.”

The first RIS requires building 1300 brand new lane miles and resurfacing 80% of the existing network.

“Our estimate is that, even with new working practices and more efficient delivery, the workforce will need to grow significantly - this could be up to a third,” Hayes said. And Highways England contracts will include requirements for training the future workforce.

“Where Highways England identifies that specific skills are needed, those skills will be mandated in contracts with suppliers. But contracts won’t just consider the job in hand, they will take account of future need. So when suppliers bid for work, they will need to commit to providing apprenticeships. And to implementing skills-plans to equip their workforce for the long-term.

“Of course, these contractual requirements will be reflected in the price that Highways England will pay,” Hayes said. “But it’s far cheaper to invest in rearing home-grown, British expertise now than wait and outsource work to expensive international consultants later.”

Hayes announced that the recruitment and training of the roads workforce will be devolved to the regions and said that government has opened discussions with the Association of Colleges about establishing regional roads academies across England. Siting and establishment of the academies will be one of Highways England’s early priorities after it is created on 1 April, Hayes said.

“If drivers think they’ve got a bad deal today, it we don’t act, it’s only going to get worse" - John Hayes

Hayes pointed out that the skills required would be the traditional engineering and construction ones but also in telecommunications, IT, nanotechnology and robotics. “Retraining current staff and bringing in new experts will take far-sightedness, ingenuity and innovation, he said. “It will mean encouraging a more diverse intake.”

He underlined that the Infrastructure Act holds future governments to a standard of long term thinking – the road strategy can be varied or replaced “but that there is such a strategy is now upheld in law,” he said. “It is a profound change which requires rethinking how future road investment is managed.”

To do nothing, he said, is not an option. Britain’s roads are ranked 28th in the world by the World Economic Forum. And between 2000 and 2009 the UK opened just 46 miles of new motorway compared to 225 miles in the Netherlands, 680 in Germany and 850 in France. Research on future UK driver numbers and behaviour has found that, to quote Hayes, “if drivers think they’ve got a bad deal today, it we don’t act, it’s only going to get worse. By 2040 congestion will have reached such a level that a quarter of all travel time will be spent sitting motionless in traffic. That is a loss to our economy equivalent to 100 million working days every year.”

Hayes also had his own views on the Armitt Commission/Infrastructure Department debate and proposed an infrastructure ministerial taskforce drawn from across all government departments with an interest in infrastructure. “It’s a taskforce we will set up and populate as soon as the post election dust has settled,” he said.