What does the industry run out of first?

This week's question

When the big programmes all peak together, what does the industry run out of first?

One tap and your vote is counted. No second step, no sign-in. You see the result straight away, and my take is on the page on Friday.

From my desk

Last week I asked what you would most want to know eighteen months before everyone else. About 70% of you said the same thing: which projects are about to start hiring. That is what the Pipeline tab in the Lechley app is for, and I did not explain last week what I am really trying to do with it. So here it is.

The government publishes the demand. Its infrastructure pipeline lists 616 projects: the client, the stage each has reached, the spend year by year and the date it comes into service. All of it is in the app, on your phone, searchable by sector, client and region.

Nobody publishes the supply. Who is going to build them? Not only the people, although that is where I started. A main contractor wins the job, but the piling, steel, M&E and civils firms underneath it, the tier twos, do most of the work, and they are often where capacity runs out first. No single list shows which of them are committed where, or when.

I am trying to put the two side by side. Projects on one side; labour and the whole supply chain on the other, main contractors, tier twos and specialists alike. Match them and you can start to see something no single employer can: how much the industry can actually carry in a given year, in a given part of the country, and the point at which three programmes will all be in full force and wanting the same planners, the same commercial managers and the same subcontractors at once.

Then read it with the salary guide. The guide covers 32 roles, and every figure moves with the region you pick. Set it beside the government pipeline and pay stops being a number on its own. You can see where in the UK the projects are being launched, when demand for a planner or a commercial manager there starts to rise, and what that role pays there today. Where this is heading is being able to show what a change on either side does to the other: what a project brought forward or pushed back does to pay in that region, and what a move in pay does to a project's chances of finding its people.

That is useful whichever seat you are in. If you are choosing your next move, it tells you where the work will be before the advert does. If you are a contractor or a specialist, it tells you which clients are about to need you. If you are a client, it tells you who you will be competing with for capacity. It gets better with every project followed and every hiring plan an employer posts, which is why the next section exists.

Follow this project

Energy - East of England - In construction

Sizewell C

A 3.2GW nuclear power station in Suffolk for Sizewell C Ltd, enough for the equivalent of six million homes. The government pipeline carries it at £38bn. Follow it and you hear when a role opens on it or its stage changes.

Free on iPhone and Android. Open Pipeline, search Sizewell, tap Follow.

On a desktop? Scan with your phone.

Employers, at every tier: you can now publish a hiring plan on the project itself, with the roles and the date you need them from. People following that project see it, and can tell you they are interested from the app. Free while it launches, and checked by hand: community.lechley.com/hire.

In the app and on the community

The app is the community in your pocket, and all of it is free.

• Pipeline: the 616 projects, the roles on them, and alerts for anything you follow.
• Salary guide: 32 roles, with base ranges and day rates for your region.
• Roles: 143 senior roles on the running list this week, 20 of them new.
• This week: the news, the movers and the Friday roundup, with comments.
• Learn: twelve pathways, from Early Careers to Mentoring, each with a certificate in your name.

Get the Lechley app   or read it all at community.lechley.com.

The pool: for the ones who did not make the cut

The industry is advertising hard for graduates and apprentices at the moment, and the big schemes turn away far more good applicants than they take. Has anybody thought about what happens to them? They applied because they wanted to work in construction. Most get a polite rejection and take that ambition to another industry.

The pool is our answer. A contractor adds one paragraph to its rejection email, offering the applicant a place in it. The applicant writes their own record: where they are, what they applied for, how far they got and what they want next. Tier twos, supply chain firms and other contractors, many of them without the budget for a recruitment drive of their own, can then look through those records, with no names shown, and ask for a conversation. The applicant decides whether to say yes.

Nobody's details are passed from one employer to another. The contractor shares nothing; the applicant puts themselves forward and can remove their record at any time. It is free on both sides. If you run a graduate or apprentice scheme, or you would like to see who is in it, start here: community.lechley.com/pool.

The week in construction

• Skanska is hiring directors for a London push. It is recruiting project and commercial directors and design teams, and tracking close to 50 projects across offices, data centres and defence worth more than £10bn. Sir Robert McAlpine created an executive director role for industrial and growth the same week. If you have office, data centre or defence delivery behind you, that is a live conversation. Read it on Lechley
• Three of the four largest housebuilders are cutting at once. Taylor Wimpey has opened redundancy consultations across about 4,500 staff, Bellway has put a limited number of roles at risk, and Vistry goes from 25 regions to 12 in January. Persimmon is the exception, on track for 12,500 completions. Regional land, technical and commercial people should be looking at who is winning the civils work. Read it on Lechley
• Laing O'Rourke has put its Middle East arm up for sale: 204 staff and about £270m of turnover, so the group can concentrate on infrastructure in the UK and Australia. Some of those 204 will weigh a move home. Read it on Lechley
• Two big jobs changed shape. McLaren is off the £280m Cardiff arena and the client consortium is taking direct control of the next phase. In Birmingham, Berkeley and the council have wound up the £2.5bn Ladywood regeneration on viability. Read it on Lechley
• Output rose 0.8% in September, the first rise in five months. Infrastructure new work was up 3.3% and private housing down 4.7% over the quarter. Turner & Townsend has new orders down 18.1% on the year and two-thirds of contractors putting margin ahead of revenue. Read it on Lechley

All seven of this week's stories, with my take, are in the Friday roundup: The majors pick their ground, and hire for it.

People on the move

• Matthew Mosley, managing director of Galliford Try's infrastructure business.
• John Butler, chief executive of Linesight from 1 January, promoted from running APAC and the GCC. Linesight has grown from 700 people to more than 2,500 since 2021 on data centres and life sciences.
• Dave Clarke, from Vinci to lead Tilbury Douglas's regional building business in Yorkshire and the North East.

All 31 of this week's senior moves are in Movers, 12 November.

Coming soon

Not a consultancy. Something this industry has not had before.

Three weeks ago I asked who you call with a problem you cannot take to your board. Most of you said a former boss or mentor, for nothing. I have been working on a better answer with a couple of the most respected senior people in UK construction, people who have run major programmes and client organisations themselves.

It is completely different from consultancy. Nobody billing by the hour, nobody selling the next phase, and no money from any supplier. It is experience kept close: people who have held the job, who already know yours, on the end of a phone when it matters, and gone when the work is done.

It is for clients, for newly appointed executives, and for anyone who has wanted that kind of mentor and advice and not known where to find it. I think it will change how this industry asks for help. More in the coming weeks.