It’s that time of year, when Business Link Magazine invites the region’s business leaders to offer up their predictions for the year ahead.
It has become something of a tradition, given that we’ve been doing this now for over 30 years.
Here we speak to Parm Bhangal, Managing Director at Bhangals Construction Consultants.
The construction industry has suffered in the past 12 months. While we anticipated a quieter year, nobody was prepared for the widespread dip across all areas.
2025 has to be a year for recovery and growth in our sector. The new Government has pledged to build 1.5 million new homes over the next five years, which should help construction companies to find greater opportunities for more building contracts.
However, we continue to face a massive labour and skills shortage, and it has been widely reported that we will need an extra 250,000 workers in the UK in order to meet demand. Therefore, there is no doubt that businesses will continue to struggle to find the right people with the right skills and right attitude in order to succeed. That skills gap for consultants and trade needs to be filled urgently and we need more apprenticeship programmes and better routes to market to achieve this.
During 2025, the industry will continue its focus on sustainability and aiming to reduce carbon emissions in each individual build through solar panels and other specialist environmental measures.
Businesses will also need to embrace technology as it advances in order to make jobs more efficient and use time most wisely.
