Brett King, director of industry transformation, EMEA, Procore, says there is a workforce crisis brewing in construction. But it isn’t the one most people are talking about
Governmental executive agency Skills England says more than a million additional workers are needed by 2035 if the nation is to meet government housing and infrastructure ambitions–the largest increase in workforce demand of any of the government’s priority sectors.
Much of the discussion has focused on recruitment. That’s important, but recruitment alone won’t solve the problem if experienced people continue to leave because the pressures of modern construction are driving burnout.
Recruitment won’t solve a retention problem
The industry has become much better at talking about mental health, but we now need to understand what those conversations are telling us and turn them into action. Research finds that half of those working in construction are still experiencing anxiety on a daily or weekly basis.
Burnout is rarely caused by one factor. It’s usually the result of multiple pressures building
over time. Financial worries, unrealistic programmes, poor communication, constant change and excessive administration all play their part.
For too long, unrealistic project planning and long working hours have been accepted as part of the job. Again, inflation has only intensified those pressures, squeezing project budgets. The result is a vicious cycle: tighter deadlines, heavier workloads and greater pressure on already stretched teams, increasing the risk of mistakes, injury and mental health issues.
Burnout needs to be seen not just as an individual wellbeing issue, but as a project delivery issue. Poor planning, fragmented information, unrealistic programmes and constant firefighting affect more than productivity – they create the conditions that lead to burnout. If the construction industry wants people to stay and keep doing a high-quality job, it needs to improve the way projects are delivered, not simply ask people to become more resilient.
Because burnout isn’t caused by hard work. It’s caused by unnecessary work.
Seeing burnout as a project risk that can be designed out
The Construction Leadership Council’s new Joint Code of Practice marks an important shift. Rather than focusing on awareness or resilience, it treats psychosocial risks as a systematic workplace issue.
In other words, the challenge is no longer awareness, but rather asking a different question. What are the common themes emerging from all these conversations around mental health? If financial pressure, excessive travel, unrealistic programmes or poor communication repeatedly appear, these are no longer simply wellbeing issues. They’re operational issues. Just as with physical safety, these operational challenges can be designed out by utilising superior planning, clearer data, and more informed project-level decision-making.
The Joint Code also broadens responsibility beyond the workforce itself. It recognises that decisions made by clients, contractors and project leaders during tendering, procurement,
planning and resourcing can determine whether pressure builds throughout a project.
Improved physical safety is a useful model for making this stick. Rather than accepting accidents as inevitable, construction increasingly designs risks out through better planning and risk assessment. The Joint Code argues the same mindset should apply to mental health.
There are several common sources of workplace stress that can be managed in this way. For example, if financial pressure consistently emerges as a major contributor to stress, perhaps the solution is to bring in independent financial advisers for regular drop-in sessions on projects. If poor planning is the common issue, perhaps programmes need to be reviewed much earlier. The intervention should directly reflect the problem at hand.
Better planning, better technology, better jobs
Burnout builds through hundreds of small frustrations. Chasing information. Waiting for drawing revisions. Reworking tasks because designs changed. Sitting in meetings that don’t resolve anything. Searching for documents that should take seconds to find. Those daily frustrations quickly accumulate. A recent study by Dodge Data & Analytics, in partnership with Procore, found that 18% of project time is lost searching for data, highlighting how disconnected information contributes to unnecessary pressure.
While technology certainly can’t eliminate stress on its own, it can be a key component in addressing some of the planning and communication issues that lead to it. It also needs to avoid becoming part of the problem. Digital tools shouldn’t create more administration, more dashboards or more complexity. Their value lies in removing unnecessary work, reducing uncertainty and giving teams back the time to focus on delivering great projects.
On top of this, AI has the potential to further reduce repetitive administrative work, surface project risks earlier, and help teams prioritise. AI creates the greatest value when it removes unnecessary work rather than simply helping people do more work. The goal should be to support better decisions and enable more time to be spent delivering projects rather than managing administration.
New talent will always be needed in construction, but recruitment alone won’t solve the workforce challenge if experienced people continue to leave. The industry has spent years encouraging people to speak openly about mental health and must continue to do so. The next step is listening differently. That means identifying trends, understanding what’s driving them, and redesigning how projects are planned and delivered to remove those pressures wherever possible.
Construction doesn’t lack resilient people. It lacks sustainable ways of working. If the industry tackles the causes of burnout, not just the symptoms, productivity will improve, and it will also build an industry where talented people choose to stay.
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