Construction employers need highly trained staff to meet regulatory requirements
(27/10/2009)

Working at height, heavy lifting and operating industrial machinery is all part of a day’s work for the 2 million people employed on building sites across the UK. Employers want highly trained staff adept in the best working practices, and employees want to stay safe in this hazardous workplace.

A raft of new health and safety industry standards will come into play in 2010. The Construction Safety Certification Scheme (CSCS) was introduced over 10 years ago to improve the quality of the sector and reduce accidents and occupational ill-health. To enforce these standards, the CSCS Skills Card will become mandatory next year.

This presets a challenge for recruitment agencies which supply the industry with temporary workers. Kieran Whyte, Operations Co-ordinator of Aberdeen-based Driver Hire and dh Recruitment says, “Our clients in the construction industry face a myriad of regulatory requirements. This becomes particularly tricky when dealing with temporary staff. While companies running the sites will have their own specific health and safety policies, it is essential that any worker sent on site meets the grade and helps the client maintain those standards.”

Championing such safety improvements in the industry, recruitment consultants at dh Recruitment recently gained their CSCS Visitors card by passing the 40 question health and safety test.

Kieran says, “being qualified in the CSCS scheme means that we can advise clients of the construction division of dh Recruitment on the cards before they become obligatory. It also gives us the in depth knowledge of what is required of our candidates. With signs of recovery in the construction sector following the recession, we want to ensure that all the construction workers we have on our books are fully equipped to take advantage of work available as the industry grows again.”

The construction industry has taken a huge hit in the recession, with 42,000 jobs being lost in the second quarter of 2009, bringing the redundancy total to 170,000 for the year. However, there are signs of a slow down in the decline of the sector with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reporting that 5% more surveyors claim their workloads are rising than those who say it is decreasing. This shows significant turnaround given that surveyors stating that their workload was diminishing outnumbered the positive responses by an average of 42% in the last three quarters.

Driver Hire launched its construction division during a company expansion in 2006 after 12 years trading as a recruitment specialist in the logistics industry.