New building and construction training facility to hone skills of ‘next generation of Tassie tradies’
The head of Master Builders Tasmania has forecasted the state needs a 40,000-strong construction workforce by 2030 if it is to keep up with a growing pipeline of major infrastructure projects.
Tasmania
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A new training centre for “the next generation of Tassie tradies” is set to welcome 3000 aspiring builders through its doors every year and will play a key role in supplying the workforce for a proposed new advanced manufacturing facility in the north of the state.
Construction of the Master Builders Tasmania training centre at Cambridge is expected to be completed by the end of the year and will begin taking students in early 2024.
Master Builders Tasmania CEO Matthew Pollock said safety training would be a focus of the centre and the facility was intended to boost the capacity of the building and construction industry in order to accommodate the state’s pipeline of major infrastructure projects.
“Once it’s fully operational, we’ll have 3000 students a year through this facility,” he said. “They’re the next generation of Tassie tradies.”
Mr Pollock said SunCable’s advanced cable manufacturing facility proposed for Bell Bay, which is projected to create 800 jobs during construction and 400 during operations, would be a boon for the industry.
But it meant the state needed to increase apprentice numbers to keep up with the number of projects on the horizon, such as the planned Macquarie Point stadium.
The Master Builders have forecast that Tasmania requires a 40,000-strong construction workforce by 2030. There are currently about 23,000 builders in the state, Mr Pollock said.
“We’re on track to [reach 40,000] now,” he said.
Mr Pollock added: “We need to keep that momentum going.”
Skills, Training and Workforce Growth Minister Felix Ellis said Tasmania had 40 per cent more apprentices than it did five years ago and the state government was “acting now, in partnership with industry to deliver … training opportunities”.
“There are kids in high school today that we hope will be taking up an apprenticeship at the SunCable facility and potentially the stadium and other opportunities around our state,” he said.
“We want to deliver, in partnership with [SunCable] and with industry, as many opportunities as we can for Tasmanian kids to come through and get a trade in the construction sector,” he said.
Opposition Leader Rebecca White said the Liberal government had not “taken vocational education seriously for their entire ten years of government”.
“This … government simply hasn’t taken the responsibility they have to provide training options for Tasmanians very seriously. And that’s why we are seeing workforce shortages – not just in the construction and building sector but across nearly every sector in Tasmania,” she said.
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