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Construction payrolls added 39,000 posts in April, which reads well in a headline and rather differently once you break it down. Thirty-one thousand of those posts are in two trades — groundworks and mechanical installation — and both are trades where the shortage was acute enough that firms have been paying over the odds for two years to fill them.

What the number is not telling you

The figure counts posts, not people. A groundworker who leaves one firm on Friday and starts at another on Monday appears twice, and in a market this hot that is happening constantly. Our own turnover in groundworks ran at 19% last year against 7% across the rest of the business.

Nor does it count the hours. Average weekly hours in the sector fell slightly for the second quarter running. More people working fewer hours each is not the same recovery as the same people working full weeks, and the second is what keeps a schedule on track.

Where the shortage actually bites

Not, in our experience, where people expect. Bricklayers and carpenters are tight but findable. The trades that hold up a job are the ones with a long certification tail:

• Testing and commissioning engineers, who arrive at the end and cannot be rushed
• Competent persons for temporary works design
• Site managers with an OSHA 30 card and experience of occupied sites

None of these can be solved by paying more this month. They are solved by somebody having started training four years ago.

What we are doing about it

We took on fourteen apprentices this intake against eight last year, and moved two of our own site managers onto a temporary works course at company expense. The math only works if they stay, which is an argument for the unfashionable business of treating people well rather than for any recruitment campaign.

If you are planning a scheme that starts on site in the next eighteen months, the commissioning window is the part of your schedule to test first. It is the one most likely to be optimistic.