Latest news: Construction industry ‘needs shorter working weeks’

Construction firms need to consider adopting shorter working weeks to encourage more young people to move into industry, it has been suggested. 04/07/2012

According to reports from Building.co.uk, Ray O'Rourke, chairman and chief executive of Laing O'Rourke , believes the sector is currently 'not very attractive' to people deciding what career path to take, stating, 'It's not sustainable to work with the current methods of delivery.'

Speaking at the Government Construction Summit , he suggested that prioritising off-site construction would make a big difference to the length of working weeks, 'inevitably' making them shorter. For that reason, his company has invested millions of pounds in an off-site construction plant in Derbyshire.

'You would have less demand for hours of work and you would be able to have young people interested in a career,' he said.

The construction industry currently has the longest working week of all industries in the UK. Data from the Office for National statistics (ONS) shows it averaged at 41.2 hours in 2011. Although this figure is less than the 43.1 hour average working week clocked up in 1992, it is still more than five hours longer than that of the services sector, the largest sector in the UK.

This comes after chief executive of Laing O’Rourke in Europe, Roger Robinson, urged the government to do more to get infrastructure projects off the ground, or face up to the fact that companies in the industry will have to make more job cuts.