Job opportunities in Education roll-out

One building sub sector that struggled to keep up during the property boom of the past few years was the Education. Listening to Ministerial announcements you might have believed that year on year there was a massive roll out of new schools. But disproportionate fund allocation, poorly planned infrastructure in Rapid Population Growth areas and inflated land prices combined to hinder those charged with delivering schools in achieving their goals.
With the slowdown in Irish residential output this year and probably next year, the Department of Education and Science (DES) Planning and Building Unit has been afforded the opportunity to catch up.

In 2008 €600m of Exchequer funding will be spent on school development, with 200 projects ranging from new school buildings to roof repairs planned for completion before year's end. Another 350 projects are scheduled to start between now and early next year. The works will be carried out primarily in the Eastern Region of Ireland (Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Wicklow and Louth) in areas of Rapid Population Growth, where it will take at least two to three years to meet the school requirements for the current level of new housing stock. Parts of Cork, Galway and Limerick have also been highlighted as areas that will experience large-scale Education infrastructure development in the next 18 months.

In 2005 the Irish Government announced a plan to provide 23 new post-primary schools and four primary schools as bundle projects through Public Private Partnership from 2006 to 2009. Plans are now at an advanced stage on three of these bundles. The first – a bundle of four schools (Two in Laois, two in Offaly) – will be built by the Macquarie Partnership for Ireland (MPFI), a consortium that includes Pierse Contracting. Work is expected to start on these in early summer. Another scheme is scheduled to begin later this year with the other penciled in for early 2009. Further projects are planned for 2009.

From a construction jobs perspective, this is all good news. School building presents an opportunity for those looking to migrate from residential development to a sector that requires similar skills.

The DES Planning and Building Unit says that the slowdown in housing has had the effect of making tenders and land prices more cost effective. In this scenario, once funding can be maintained, Education roll out should provide sustainable construction job opportunities for a wide variety of construction trades people and construction professionals in the coming years.

Public Contracts Opportunity

In a radio report last week one Irish union representative suggested the Government should bring forward more public contracts in the National Development Plan (NDP) in an effort to replace job losses in the housing sector, even if this means borrowing heavily.
However with the Irish civil engineering sector performing so well in recent times, the Government should be looking at the feasibility of bringing forward more NDP projects to take full advantage of the unprecedented output abilities of Irish civil engineers at this point in time.

Because of the huge housing output of the past few years, infrastructure such as schools, healthcare and water treatment are now playing catch up. While there will be many construction job opportunities in these areas in the coming years a golden opportunity is being lost at the moment because projects aren't coming through the system quickly enough.

The Irish Government stumbled earlier this year when it announced that there would be delays in getting a number of high profile Transport 21 Plan projects to site. Coincidently, there is a Transport 21 billboard campaign running at the moment, which highlights the Irish Government's €34bn investment in road and rail infrastructure as part of the €184bn budgeted National Development Plan 2007 - 2013.

While there is no shortage of activity in the civils sector, when you consider the productivity of those in civils jobs over the past two years you would have to say never before have Irish civil engineering firms been better placed to handle more work. They regularly deliver major roads projects below budget and ahead of schedule and many in the sector believe there is capacity for even greater output.

Last year, former CECA (Civil Engineering Contractors Association) president John Craddock said that while he was delighted with the success of the sector to date, he believed that Irish civil engineering contractors and their construction teams were capable of handling even more projects. It is just a matter of those projects coming on line.

So maybe it is time to revisit the NDP roll out schedule before the opportunity is lost.