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We need a ‘Construction Competence Council’, say CITB and HSE

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  1. The CITB has been the most appalling failure.
    The grants you get back barely cover the cost of filling out the form, the organisation costs a fortune, if you read the minutes of their meetings they are pretty dismal. They have been responsible for the atrocious drop in standards across the whole industry, I don’t think they have anyone who understands the industry and you try and get information out of them they fight like stink.
    I bumped into an ex-colleague not so long ago and I said after you left didn’t you work for the CITB, his response was no one “works” for the CITB, I think that’s probably right from my dealings with them. They only seem interested in maintaining their pay grade and pension.
    They pander to the large contractors and my experience is large contractors do not produce good tradesmen, the best tradesmen come from small to medium sized builders who have a traditional mix of tradesmen and a variety of small mixed contracts that give tradesmen a general appreciation of construction work. It’s the smaller contractors who need proper support.
    Then when it comes to Surveyors and the like, during their year out they sit in front of a computer and never actually go on to site, Architects and Engineers now seem to be extremely well qualified but have no understanding of construction, they can’t see or understand what is right in front of their very eyes. It’s also very sad that the people who have a major say in the industry, Egan, Latham Morrell and Hansford seem to have little knowledge or understanding of the real industry.
    Architects draw childish pictures, engineers then have to make them buildable [very un-economically], contractors don’t really know how to build them, engineers and Architects certainly don’t, it’s a real sad state of affairs. Why does every Eco building have to look like a badly built shed?
    Now we seem to have a preference for the NEC form of contract, written by lunatics, does anyone actually read it before they decide to use it?
    Main Contractors now want you to go through pre-qualification with the likes of Capita’s Construction Line, why would you want to give this leviathan more money; they do nothing to improve the skills in the industry or actually make it more efficient. It seems to me that the People at the top do not trust their staff or their own judgement when they sublet work. Again this exemplifies the lack of knowledge and experience of the senior people in the industry and they sit on various Boards including that of the CITB and generally get it wrong and cause the people at the bottom of the food chain to suffer!
    I don’t see how it will ever change for the better now. Sad, Sad, sad when you think of what a great and important industry this could and should be.
    We need to get rid of the CITB it’s a waste of money and has not served the industry well!!

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