Shortage of skilled workers is driving up building costs, warns TV’s Lisa
QUANTITY surveyor Lisa O’Brien was well known to viewers of Room To Improve for pruning over-running building costs.
Now she is fighting building costs of her own in her new role as a builder.
A major shortage of tradespeople has pushed up the cost of paying construction teams.
She swapped her jousts with celebrity architect Dermot Bannon to set up Brifin Homes with two colleagues, building luxury homes on niche sites.
“Building costs have definitely gone up,” she said.
She said a serious shortage of skilled workers has driven up the costs charged by tradespeople by up to 20pc since the start of the year.
Her efforts to overcome the rising costs of skilled personnel are being mirrored throughout the building industry in Ireland.
The construction sector in Ireland is seeing teams of tradesmen abruptly leaving building sites to work for higher money on other sites just down the road.
She told the Sunday Independent: “Tradesmen and labour are scarce on the ground. We are definitely paying more on labour costs.”
She echoed a plea by the Construction Industry Federation for more apprenticeships to help fill the huge need for more qualified tradespeople.
The federation stated there was a need for 3,000 new apprentices every year but only one-third of that figure are entering training schemes.
“From the start of the year, carpentry costs have gone up by around €70 a day. That would be a rise of about 20pc to 25pc,” she said.
“We have a very good working relationship with the sub-contractor pool and that is what is really important now for any main contractor,” she said.
“So we know these guys. It’s all about cash flow, paying them, so they would be loyal to us.
“But if they are going to get a site cost somewhere else 20pc higher, they are going to go there. We now have to match the market rate.
“It’s the same with bricklayers as well, especially around Dublin city.
“You could have bricklayers who could have been working around €1.10 a block and now you can pay up to €1.40 a block in the city centre,” she said.
“We’ve six houses in Sallins so they know we are going to have a crew there for the guts of six or seven weeks — you get a better rate,” added Ms O’Brien, who still has clients for private quantity surveyor work.
“Labour shortages are always having an effect on your margins. You are not getting off the site as quickly because you can’t get the tradesmen in.
“You say you will be out in 12 months but then, all of a sudden, you can’t get plasterers on site.
“It’s up to the main contractor to mitigate that delay so you might have lads in on Saturday and Sunday on overtime to catch up.”
When the construction industry collapsed in the recession, large numbers of tradespeople left the country, many settling in Australia and Britain.
The Government and the industry needs to attract many of them to return, she said.
“Encouraging the return of electricians, plumbers, plasterers is important,” she said.
Declan Dempsey, director of communications with the Construction Industry Federation, said: “In 2016, we estimated we’d need an extra 100,000 employees to deliver on the housing promises and infrastructure promises the Government was making.
“We would need 4,000 brickies and 5,000 carpenters just to deliver those promises by 2020 or there would be an absolute skills shortage and wages and labour costs would go up.
“The problem was predicted and almost nothing was done,” he said.
“The sector has been hiring an extra 1,000 workers every month since 2013. We’ve got 55,000 new people working in the industry since then,” he said.
But those workers are mainly building commercial properties rather than residential. Far more people are needed, including far more women, he said.
He agreed that carpenters were costing around €70 a day more than a year ago and that skilled labour costs had risen by up to 25pc in the past year.