By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamian Contractors Association’s (BCA) president yesterday called for the creation of a school dedicated solely to the construction industry to “aggressively” tackle skilled labour shortages.

Leonard Sands told Tribune Business that construction was “too big an industry”, and too important to the Bahamian economy’s growth and well-being, not to have a specialist school focused only on producing qualified electricians, carpenters, masons, plumbers and other skilled tradesmen in the quantities that the sector requires.

Speaking after Prime Minister Philip Davis KC asserted that construction industry manpower shortages were chiefly responsible for a recent increase in work permit applications and approvals, due to a lack of skilled Bahamian workers to meet the needs of numerous resort and real estate developments, the BCA chief said the Bahamas Technical and Vocational Institute (BTVI) is inadequate to address the issue.

Mr Sands, suggesting BTVI is too academic and classroom-based, and also has to cover non-construction trades, told this newspaper it was “a bit tough for us to agree 100 percent” with the Prime Minister’s position that construction is largely responsible for the work permit increase.

To fully agree, he argued that the BCA and wider industry needs access to more data held by the likes of the Department of Labour and Department of Immigration. This would include the number of work permit applications and approvals, both for the industry and wider economy, for 2025 to-date and the same period in 2024, plus the number of building projects underway now and for last year.

Only then, Mr Sands said, can true comparisons be made and the extent of the construction industry’s Bahamian labour shortage - which is widely known to exist - be determined. “The Prime Minister may be 100 percent right. I don’t have enough data to agree with him 100 percent,” he added. “I suspect he’s 100 percent right, but we need to see the data.

“That’s the analysis that has to happen for us to accept the fact that construction activity is the reason for the number of work permits.” Mr Sands said many foreign direct investment (FDI) projects, such as the Four Seasons Ocean Club Residences, are only just starting to “come out of the ground” and have yet to reach the vertical construction stage when skilled manpower demands are at their greatest.

However, the BCA president acknowledged: “Any contractor would be challenged right now, if they have a sizeable project to build, to find certain skills. If you’re looking for 50 carpenters you will be challenged on a project. If you’re looking for 40-50 drywall mechanics you will be short and have to make labour applications.

“We’re holding our own on plumbing but are right at the brink of not having enough plumbers to do the work in the time required. Masonry... if you do another big project you won’t have enough masonry technicians.” Mr Sands said contractors also faced little choice, if two major projects are taking place at the same time on a Family Island, but to bring in foreign labour as there are insufficient workers locally.

To address these deficiencies, the BCA chief said the Bahamian construction industry needs its own dedicated training school similar to the School of Hospitality and Tourism Studies so it can produce skilled tradesmen to meet future demand.

“We need a construction school in The Bahamas,” he told Tribune Business. “There has to be a construction school. Construction is too big an industry and employers need to be training persons in construction aggressively. Persons will say we have BTVI, but I’m specifically talking about a construction trades school.

“If 1,000 school leavers are looking for the industry to absorb them, and they have not got a skill and we don’t train these people, the numbers will increase the next year. At some point in time we will have a need for 5,000 to 6,000 people. If we don’t train them, where do we think they’re going to come from? If we don’t train them, and know we’re going to need them, we’re going to have to import them. It’s as simple as that.”

Explaining why a dedicated construction school is required, Mr Sands added: “The reason it cannot work properly through BTVI is because BTVI is an institution where you train to get certified in a certain way. Industry training, from going to work, is different. It’s shorter, more accelerated and focused on targeting the industry.

“You don’t want to sit a guy in the classroom for most of the course. He’s going to work in the field. If you look at trade shops in the US, which I have experience of, you work all day and go to trade shops at night. You sit and learn a bit of theory for an hour, but the emphasis is on working in the field.

“Plumbers make $2,000 a week not from paperwork, but with expertise. And expertise comes from experience, and experience comes only from working in the field. That’s how industry approaches it. We’re talking about what industry needs and business needs. Industry needs trained people, and businesses know what they need and what works for their business,” the BCA president continued. “We have some labour issues we need to look at.”