Sustainable Construction Project delivery: A Skills Availability Assessment in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate factors affecting skills availability in the Eastern Cape Province for construction firms to achieve sustainable construction project implementation. Both the quantitative and qualitative research approaches were used in this study. A questionnaire was distributed to construction firms listed under general building Grade 5 to 9 in the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) register of Contractors within the Eastern Cape (EC) Province were surveyed. Validation of the questionnaire survey was conducted by data sourced through semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed factors affecting skills availability within construction firms are mainly two-fold: The first is retaining of skilled workers as most of employees are moving away from the industry and secondly the lack of adequate training in the sector. Findings from the qualitative study reveal that workers that possess constructions skills are moving away, some of construction workers have no interest in working in the construction industry and there is a lack of job availability. This study is limited to factors affecting skills availability on construction firms within the EC. The results obtained from this paper present factors affecting skills availability in the construction industry towards achieving sustainable construction project delivery. The practical implications are that the industry should be more diligent towards employee training and retain their skilled employees who are lost to another field which offer better remuneration. This was based factors affecting skills availability in the Eastern Cape Province for construction firms´ to achieve sustainable construction project implementation and recommend areas of improvement concerning factors affecting skills availability on construction firms.