Everyone predicts that 2026 will be defined by AI, smart buildings, and automation. From where I’m sitting, as someone running a self-delivery FM business, that focus misses the real problem.
The biggest risk to FM and construction in 2026 is skills, and more importantly, how badly we are managing them.
We keep saying there is a skills shortage. Then we actively make it worse.
Recently, Construction Management published an article warning that skills and apprenticeships across construction are weakening rather than improving. For many of us working at the delivery end of the industry, this simply confirms what we are already seeing on live jobs every day.
You can read the article here:
https://constructionmanagement.co.uk/construction-leaders-warn-of-weakening-skills-and-apprenticeships/
This is why my prediction for 2026, and beyond, is that skills will become the defining issue for FM and construction unless we change course.
Experience is being pushed out – Across FM and construction, experienced tradespeople are increasingly being excluded from sites because they do not hold the right qualification. I am talking about electricians, roofers and engineers with thirty or forty years of experience who have worked their entire careers safely, now being told they are not competent because they do not have an NVQ.
Many of these qualifications did not exist when they trained. The removal of experience-based CSCS cards has closed the door on a significant part of the workforce, including many European trades who relied on that route to demonstrate competence.
Gold cards are now positioned as the benchmark, yet there is very little discussion about who is realistically going to obtain them and how, particularly when even highly experienced workers struggle to demonstrate competence in the way the system now demands.
Paper competence versus real competence
Competence is supposed to be a balance of training, knowledge and experience. Increasingly, it has become a paperwork exercise.
“I cannot get a roofer with thirty years of experience onto a commercial roof because I cannot produce training certificates that did not exist when they were trained. Meanwhile, the defect that needs fixing remains unresolved.“
We talk constantly about safety, yet we are prepared to leave real risks in place while evidence portfolios are reviewed by people who have never been on site and never carried out the work themselves. This does not make buildings safer. It makes decision-making slower and further removed from reality.
Apprenticeships without capacity – We are repeatedly told that apprenticeships are the answer to the skills shortage. As employers, we want to take people on and train them properly.
The problem is capacity. There are not enough apprenticeship places. There are not enough college courses. In many areas, colleges are under-resourced, oversubscribed or simply not offering the construction trade courses people actually need.
You can offer someone a job tomorrow, but if they cannot secure a place at college, they cannot legally be an apprentice. Without a course, there is no framework to support them and no qualification at the end. This is not a future concern. It is happening right now.
A growing gap in the workforce – The current system is creating a widening age gap across the industry. At one end, we have highly experienced workers nearing retirement who are being pushed out because they no longer meet new competency requirements. At the other end, we have young people trying to enter the industry through an apprenticeship system that cannot support them.
In the middle, there is very little.
That gap matters. Experience is how skills are passed on. If experienced people are excluded, who will train the next generation? If apprentices cannot access college courses, how do they ever reach full competence?
Last week, I wrote about what happens when experience no longer counts, focusing on grandfather rights and the unintended consequences of removing experience-based routes. That article is here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-experience-longer-counts-grandfather-rights-cscs-sonia-murton-fdw6e
My prediction for 2026 and beyond – If we continue down this route, the skills shortage will not improve. It will accelerate.
“We will push experienced people out of the industry. We will fail to bring new people through in sufficient numbers. We will increase reliance on subcontracting and agency labour. We will introduce greater safety and delivery risks, not smaller ones”.
This is not a future problem. It is already happening.
My prediction for 2026, 2027 and 2028 is simple. Unless we rebalance how we define competence, invest properly in apprenticeship capacity and stop treating experience as optional, the skills crisis will define the next phase of FM and construction.
Sonia Murton – Founder & Managing Director, Westbury FM Limited.
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