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GCSE Construction & Built Environment Awards

The Rt. Hon. Stephen Timms MP,  Former Minister of State for Competitiveness
Institute of Civil Engineers,  08 October 2007

I am delighted to be here and to have the opportunity to congratulate you all. I am pleased this event is taking place at the start of National Construction Week, because the week gives a chance for the construction industry to show off the great careers it offers – and those are opportunities I am very keen that all the award winners here should know about and be enthused by because there is no doubt today that construction offers people a great future.

I used to be a Minister in the Treasury. Nobody should be in any doubt about the importance of construction for the economy:

• Over 8% of UK GDP;
• Annual output of over £110 billion;
• Over 270 thousand enterprises employing some 3 million people.

But the importance of construction goes far beyond its economic value, huge though this is. Its also central to our social ambitions for Britain. Building and improving schools and hospitals. Providing more housing, doing it in low carbon ways that protect the environment – and building as well the infrastructure to create sustainable communities. These tasks are today central to the mission of Government, and the success of the construction industry in all these areas will have a big impact on whether people feel the Government has been successful.

Our commitment to public investment will be maintained when the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review is published by the Chancellor tomorrow. With the Building Schools for the Future programme, for example, around 200 schools across the country will benefit in the first wave from a share of £2.1 billion in capital investment.

We have had the biggest hospital building programme ever since the NHS was founded - 76 new hospitals open; 29 under construction; and we are on track for our commitment: 100 large hospital schemes by 2010.

Visit any of the major city centres around Britain at the moment and you can’t help but be impressed by this transformation underway.

My constituency in East London is at the heart of a transformation being achieved by the construction industry. The Olympic Games in five years time will be a superb showcase for UK construction. I am excited as well by what I see at Canary Wharf. I can remember when there was nothing there at all – today there are almost 100,000 jobs. In the Thames Gateway we are going to need large scale house building over the years ahead – and once again it will be this industry on whom we are depending for success.

The first new rail link in Britain for over 60 years will be completed next month. On its way from St Pancras to the continent, it will tunnel under my constituency, and what the construction industry has achieved at the stations on the line has been superb – St Pancras is a real new London icon, and the East London station at Stratford is magnificent too. And on Friday we had the announcement of a go ahead for Crossrail, another vital project for Britain which will keep the construction industry very busy indeed.

And I am enthusiastic about the prospects for this industry providing good jobs and attractive careers for many of the bright and enthusiastic young people I meet as local MP – young people looking forward with optimism to their place in the Britain of the future, as they see Britain – and not least over the next few years Britain’s built environment – more and more at the centre of the world’s attention.

I recently visited Heathrow Terminal 5, which opens next year. What really impressed me was the scale of the project, and the innovation that is taking place there.

It is vital that we recruit, and train the people we need to complete these great projects. The industry relies on a whole range of professions and skills, and we need high quality vocational education, alongside more conventional academic routes, for our businesses to be successful, and for everyone to achieve their aspirations.

Step 1 has to be to encourage the best students, with ability and aptitude, to choose a career in construction. National Construction Week, Ambassadors and other programmes have all helped –work with schools is crucial.

I commend ConstructionSkills for spearheading the establishment of the new construction and built environment GCSE. And the teachers and schools participating too, for readiness to give the new GCSE a go, and to be the pioneers.
I hope you will feel you have been in at the start of something very important.

The students here this evening have set a great example, and shown that hard work pays off. I hope you will feel proud of what you have achieved. You will be right to feel proud.

Congratulations. Well done – and I wish you every success in whatever direction you choose for the future – but don’t forget that construction is going to continue to be an exciting industry for many years to come.

Thank you.