CEO of the Civil Contractors Federation SA, Rebecca Pickering, has said a lack of formal recognition of the civil construction industry and subsequent absence of apprenticeship funding support is disincentivising young people away from an industry that desperately needs more workers.

Pickering has worked in the civil, commercial building and construction industries for over 22 years and said the $18.6 billion the Department of Infrastructure plans to spend in South Australia in the next four years is only made possible by  the civil construction industry, which is “struggling to find workers ‘across the board”.

“We’re the one trade that actually builds all of the foundations for those investments, whether it be a hospital, a superstructure, or road,” Pickering said.

Civil construction encapsulates a number of works including earthworks, pipelaying tunnel construction, bridge construction and road construction.

“Basically everything that has to happen pre-work to build, hospitals, super structures, we’re pretty much the foundation trade that carries out all the work before above ground construction happens.”

Despite ‘desperately’ needing workers in a variety of streams, Pickering said occupations under civil construction are not recognized by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), making it difficult to know the scale of the issue.

“It means that when you look at the Jobs and Skills Summit data, we don’t exist on paper anywhere because we don’t have any occupational codes,” she said.

Pickering said this oversight by administrative institutions has been occurring and reoccurring over decades.

“I think it’s just the legacy that we’re unfortunately stuck in because civil construction has always been traditionally cast as an unskilled labor.”

Pickering said that since civil construction is not officially recognised,  apprenticeships are not supported by the Australian Apprenticeships Incentives System, deterring youth from considering a pathway in the industry.

“The funding supports apprentices with a cost of living payment as well as support for employers,”

“We don’t get funded. But if you’re a locksmith, hairdresser, or a butcher, you can…it just boggles the mind.”

Last week an industry roundtable heard South Australia’s building industry needs another 10,000 construction workers in the next five years despite already struggling to fill jobs, 

“This can’t be left by the wayside. I can’t pick up the [shortfall] with skilled or unskilled migration, or interstate migration which was only 700 people last year, that’s just nowhere near enough,” she said.

“How are we going to manage $18.6 billion dollars worth of infrastructure when we’re only just managing a billion with the current workforce.”

Having made presentations to students in high schools Pickering said students are aware of the incentives other paths can offer them.

“When I present to kids they know they can get the $5000 cash-in-hand payment if they pick any other trade than civil,” she said.

“I just need a warm body that wants to work outside, is happy to do a job for the next three years. And yeah, we can give them a qualification at the end where they can be earning $100,000 in their early twenties.”

A spokesman for the Statistical Standards & Infrastructure team at the ABS said a number of the professions in Civil Construction have job codes in the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO).

“Occupations within ANZSCO are identified based on the skill level and skill specialisation required to undertake the role,” the spokesman said.

“A number of the ‘professions’ listed are separately identified within ANZSCO. Road Marker, Traffic Managers, Earth Movers and Plant Operators are broken down to a number of occupations.

“In the March 2022 federal budget, the ABS was provided with new funding to undertake a comprehensive review and update of ANZSCO (for delivery by December 2024) and commence a rolling program of classification maintenance to better reflect the modern Australian labour market.”