Licensing the industry, solving the skills crisis and announcing an election result

It was a pleasure to welcome some members: including FMB’s National President Chris Carr, to the 2025 FMB Scotland AGM on Friday 6 June. Of course, the Scotland Master Builder Awards dinner and ceremony was top of the bill for FMB events that day. That said, the AGM did have drama when your Scotland President Pam Wilson announced the results of the 2025 elections for the FMB Scotland Board.

In Pam’s words “My thanks to every member who put themselves forward to be elected onto our Scotland Board this year. Nine members had submitted nominations for the six vacancies on the Scotland Board with all members in Scotland being eligible to vote. I look forward to working with both new and familiar faces to support all members and drive the FMB forward in Scotland.”

The 9 members elected or re-elected are:

• Lee Cairns, Thistle Trade Group Ltd
• Martin Daly, Martin Daly Builders Ltd
• Ryan Fair, George Fair Joiners & Contractors Ltd
• Stuart Livingstone, Stuart Livingstone Joinery Limited
• Alastair Raitt, H M Raitt & Sons Limited
• Pam Wilson, Kevin Wilson Joiners and Building Contractors Limited

You can see the full list of everyone on the FMB Scotland Board here. 

Roundtable discussion on the skills crisis

I joined a group of leading construction industry figures to examine Scotland’s construction skills crisis at a discussion in Edinburgh. Attracting and retaining competent people: from craft operatives to business support roles, is the number 1 challenge members consistently raise to me.

Those from the college sector and policymakers certainly left the discussion (yes it was around a roundtable) better informed on what local building firms want to see change.

Three takeaways from the discussion:

• The importance of reshaping perceptions of the industry, that construction must be seen not just as a job, but as a career.
• The need for deeper collaboration between education and industry, ensuring that training reflects the skills actually needed on sites.
• That more needs to be done to retain a new generation of apprentices after new figures show a high dropout rate.

Licence to Build

You may know that the FMB has long been calling for the introduction of a mandatory licensing scheme. In May we launched the new ‘Licence to Build’ report, which sets out a model for implementing a licensing scheme in the UK, at an event at the House of Lords.

Since then, I’ve been working to promote our arguments about licensing to industry and policymakers in Scotland. This included being invited to record a ‘Hard Hat Talks’ podcast with Kenneth Martin of Block architects.

Whilst this was a friendly discussion and my first ever podcast, Kenneth certainly tested my industry knowledge and the FMB’s arguments for licensing. Hopefully I did a good job! The podcast will be out in July so I will share it then.

Authors

Gordon Nelson

FMB Scotland Hub Director, Federation of Master Builders

Director, Federation of Master Builders Scotland

Gordon has nearly twenty years’ experience of working in membership organisations in Scotland and joined the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) in 2014. Prior to this, he worked at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) and for Unilever in business development, membership management and business-to-business marketing roles. Amongst his responsibilities in his role as the Director for FMB Scotland are public affairs, media relations, governance and representing member’s interests to Scottish policy makers and stakeholders within the Scottish construction industry. Gordon is the Secretary of the Cross-Party Group on Construction in the Scottish Parliament, and he is a member of the Scottish Building Standards Futures Board. Gordon represents the FMB on Scotland’s Construction Industry Collective Voice: which is comprised of the leading construction trade and professional bodies. In spring 2023 Gordon was appointed as an industry co-chair of the Construction Leaderships Forum’s (CLF) Transformation Board.

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