The last few years have been challenging for IMCA members, in a tough contracting climate and with increased emphasis on safety, not to mention the changing pattern of work that financial and technological advances have brought about. Many people within our industry believe that, as our industry advances, the number of skilled people we rely upon to undertake key roles is not keeping pace with these changes. Is this perception or fact? If we are serious about continuing to develop our industry, we need to plan for the future and assess the global requirements of IMCA members to ensure that we have sufficient resources to meet demand in the years ahead.

IMCA debated this issue internally and, as a result, commissioned a detailed skills audit to identify the actual position from a cross-section of contractors around the world representing IMCA membership.

The questionnaire process started in late 2003. However, to be able to write a representative report, responses to the questionnaire were still being processed in May 2005. This means that the 'snapshot' of the market covers about 18 months and in that period changes in activity levels were already occurring. At the time of publication, the industry is extremely busy world-wide and many members are seeing skills shortages which were not predicted by the questionnaire respondents in their 2- and 5-year forecasts. Similar comments about skills shortages abound throughout the world at the moment in a variety of publications.

The Training, Certification & Personnel Competence (TCPC) Committee [now renamed 'Competence & Training'] is already working hard on addressing the findings of the survey, which will no doubt be of wide interest in the industry.