Skills Needs Analysis in the Construction Sector in Lviv

Skills Needs Analysis in the Construction Sector in Lviv

A case study of the application of a governance tool that can be used by social partners to improve their understanding of the evolving needs of the stakeholders they represent.

Short description:

The draft law on vocational education, which was submitted to the Ukrainian Parliament in 2016, proposed that VET strategy should in future be determined at the regional level by the oblast administration, in consultation with the regional VET Councils. Until then the general practice had been for central government to decide the number of graduates needed for each occupation in each region. Responsibility for this would now fall to the regional administration, along with the tasks of estimating the budget needed to provide these services and acquiring this funding from available sources, at the regional or national, public or private levels.

This posed a challenge for the regions, whose administrative bodies may in the past have contributed to, but never took responsibility for, carrying out this task. The draft law in effect required the regions to acquire new strategic capabilities in the domain of VET service planning and management. It also provided an opportunity for the introduction of new scientific methods for estimating demand for occupations and for understanding how skills needs are changing within sectors, thus offering the chance to identify new skills and occupations for which demand may increase in the coming years.

The case study comprises a summary of a pilot project to introduce new techniques for skills needs assessment targeted on the construction sector in the Ukrainian oblast of Lviv. The project focused on the use of surveys for employers and employees, and provided a model for cooperation between the public sector, local employers and the business associations that represent them.

The report provides detailed findings on the demand for specific skills, as well as more general qualitative observations on the need for more frequent and more systematic collaboration between employers and local VET networks. It also draws attention to the necessity for developing greater cooperation on the basis of public-private partnerships.