Determinants of the Skilled Labour Demand and Supply in Building Construction Industry of Western Province in Sri Lanka
Original Research Article The construction industry is primarily labour intensive and heavily relies upon the skills of its workforce and the success of any construction output is directly impacted by the skilled labourers. With high turnover rates, maintaining a proper balance between skilled labour demand and supply is crucial for retaining desired labour requirement within the Sri Lankan construction industry. Consequently, considering the aforementioned requirement, this research aims to analyse the present situation of the skilled labourers in building construction industry in Sri Lanka. Such a study would benefit the construction industry by identifying the imbalances between demand and supply of specific construction skills to facilitates proper planning and implementing strategies to address the skill mismatch with the timely need to the present context of Sri Lankan construction industry which is experiencing a speedy growth after the ethnic war. Succeeding a comprehensive literature synthesis, a survey was carried out by taking the views from the project managers in construction industry. Views were obtained by structured questionnaire where Likert Scale was used to measure the influence of each factor and to reflect the main objectives of the study. Descriptive, significance and correlation analysis were conducted by the aid of SPSS tool for interpretation of results. The current skills and competency levels of labourers are not sufficient to fulfill the demand of the industry except for bricklaying and plastering. The future supply of the skills also indicated an unbalanced level in expected demand and expected supply of skills. The research findings can be used by all project managers of the construction industry in order to predict the supply and demand of labour requirement. The research represents the current supply and demand of labour requirement. The future supply and demand are predicted according to the project managers' opinions along with possible strategies to retain skilled labour. The findings of the research positively assist on addressing issues of current labour supply and demand in construction industry. Subsequently it contributes to enable pathways for future research and strategic policy making in a positive manner.