Abstract: Most Ghanaian construction workers have low levels of education, often below Junior High School or its equivalent1. The skills of workers, especially artisans are also limited. The informal apprenticeship system, which churns out most of these tradesmen, is not well designed to deliver the quality of skills needed in the construction industry. There is no compulsion on firms and contractors to undertake continual development of the skills of their employees. Indeed, for some types of works, contractors have had to recruit from neighbouring Togo because of a lack of local expertise. Where this is not possible, it has partly led to the poor performance on projects in areas such cost, quality and productivity. This attitude has negative ramifications for the quality of construction works.
The lack of a quality assurance mechanism, reputation-based regulatory system and certification has contributed to opportunistic behaviours among tradesmen to the detriment of clients. Consequently, there is a low level of professionalism in the construction industry especially among the freelance tradesmen and small and medium scale firms. Similar problems with the electricians led to the development of a regulation and certification of the trade, just recently. Therefore, as part of the Construction Industry Development Programme, there is the need to develop a human capital development strategy and a mentorship scheme for the construction sector, which is expected to lead to the certification of construction workers and fill in the skills gaps.
Objectives: The principal aim of this project is to promote professionalism and accountability in industry by developing and advocating the adoption of a system of certification, mentorship and a code of ethics for construction workers. Its specific objectives are as follows:
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Conduct a review of the relevant literature on construction certification across countries including Ghana;
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Review international examples of construction certification policies and schemes;
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Develop construction certification scheme for the construction industry in Ghana.
Literature Review:
The literature review focused on understanding the current situation of the construction sector concerning construction skills and construction certification systems of skills.
Two types of materials were used in order to ensure the reliability and validity of the data sources employed to gather the necessary information to carry out the research and compose the literature review. The first one consists of research papers published in recognised and high quality academic journals and the second one involves the compilation of government reports and publications developed by the construction industry. The search has been carried out using keywords in databases such as Google Scholar, Scopus and Science Direct. The keywords used to look for the required information were related to construction certification systems of skills and construction skills.
Unfortunately, this search has made it clear that there is a poor variety of available articles, which deal with the concerns previously exposed in the research objectives. The same thing happens with the Certification Systems of skills. There is a wide gap about the development and organisation of these systems.
Conclusion:
This paper, therefore, would help bridge the gap in the development and organisation of certification systems of skills, in order to provide qualityartisans, supervisors and other workers in Ghana’s construction sector, asGhana aims to achieve the SDGs.
- 1. Fugar and Salam, 2007; Adjei, 2009; Oduro-Owusu, 2010