The impact of modern methods of construction on the skills requirements for housing

This research was carried out to consider the effect that increased uptake of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) in home building could have on the workforce requirements for delivering new homes in England as the Government looks to deliver on its Housing Ambition.

The analysis shows that increased uptake of MMC can influence future workforce requirements and help to mitigate some of the occupational demand pressure.

If the ambition of 300,000 homes was met by home building using current construction methods, it would require an additional 195,000 workers by 2025.

However, increased use of MMC could reduce this to around 158,000 additional workers.

The report also highlights that the home building sector looks set to face a series of challenges:

• In the short term it will need to grow and develop workers to support homes built using the current construction methods.
• While in the medium to longer term it will be necessary to maintain the onsite workers at the same time as developing the offsite workforce to deliver MMC builds.
• 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.