The Board of Trustees of Fundación Laboral de la Construcción held its half-yearly meeting last Tuesday, at which it approved the organisation's accounts for 2020 and presented the corporate report of the last year, entitled 'Comprometid@s contigo' (trad. Committed to you).

It also approved a renewal of its organisational structure to face the new challenges of the sector, "in which construction is going to recover its leading role in the Spanish economy, especially with the Next Generation European Funds and an increasingly innovative and digital construction". This was confirmed by the heads of the organisation: Pedro Fernández Alén (CNC) -President-, and Vicente Sánchez Jiménez (CCOO del Hábitat) and Pedro Hojas Cancho (UGT FICA) -both Vice-Presidents-.

The construction social partners expressed their desire to carry out a digital transformation of the entity, to bring it closer "to the sectoral companies' needs and to adapt the Foundation to the new times, in which digitalisation and innovation will be the main characteristics of construction".

The new organisational structure includes the appointment of a new General Director of Fundación Laboral, Julio Gil Iglesias. An economist and lawyer, who until now was Co-Director of Horizone Consulting Inmobiliario; Director of Construction, Urban Planning; and Real Estate at Bufete Schüller. He was also General Director of the Spanish Association of Construction Developers (Asociación de Promotores Constructores de España -APCE-) for seven years.

The new structure will also bring other changes in the management structure of the entity, which will be organised in six departments. Some of them will be created or will have new approaches in order to face the new challenges of the sector.

More than 70,000 workers trained in the year of the pandemic

Despite the difficult situation of the past year, because of the Covid-19 crisis, the balance of Fundación Laboral de la Construcción was positive. In 2020, the entity trained a total of 71,833 construction workers, nearly 3,320,000 training hours, and 8,337 courses.

It should be noted that 72.5 % of those trained (52,107 students) chose training related to Occupational Risk Prevention (ORP), the 24.7 % (17,711 students) chose trades and professions in the sector, and 2.8 % (2,015 students) chose cross-cutting management subjects. Concerning the type of training, 87.6 % of the trainees chose face-to-face training (62,916).

The course in which most people were trained in 2020 was the "PRL for Bricklaying Works", with 16,342 workers. This was followed by the "Basic level of prevention in construction", with 6,848 students. In third position was the "Procedures and techniques for working at heights" course, with 3,361 students.

Re-opening of Centres and commitment to online training

After a few weeks of pause in their face-to-face activity at its Training Centres, Fundación Laboral de la Construcción returned to open its facilities at the end of May 2020, adapting them to the regulations established in the anti-Covid Plan, in order to comply with the recommendations of the health authorities and guarantee people's safety. 

In order to preserve the professionals' health, Fundación Laboral implemented digitalisation and the online training offer.  In April, the organisation opened its platform for open and short online courses (MOOCs) to the general public; in order to offer free training in the most current subjects of the sector to all workers and construction companies.

In total, more than 54,500 registrations were recorded in 2020 in different training curricula with more than 50 short courses ( between four and ten hours in duration) to acquire knowledge related to innovation and good practices in construction.

Besides the opening of the online training platform, last year the Nanograde "Construction Professionals 4.0" was launched, with 220 hours, together with Fundación Telefónica and CEOE.

Also in 2020, a new service was launched: 'Conecta Fundación', for holding webinars and online conferences, focused on different interesting sectoral topics.

Promoting occupational health and safety

Despite the activity pause by Covid-19 crisis, more than 21,000 on-site advisory visits were carried out in 2020, 17.6% more than in 2019. Of the total number of visits, 74.5% were funded by the Joint Body for Prevention in Construction (Organismo Paritario para la Prevención en la Construcción -OPPC-).

As for the free advice service on occupational risk prevention, called 'Línea Prevención' (trad. Prevention Line); 8,777 queries were answered last year. Its website, which offers preventive content on construction, registered a total of 114,000 visits in 2020.

More than 3,000 positions offered on the sector's job portal

The reference portal for employment in the construction sector, construyendoempleo.com, consolidates year by year as the meeting point between professionals and sectoral companies. In 2020 published a total of 3,069 positions offered. In addition, 3,949 candidates and 576 new companies registered.

Currently, there are more than 90,000 registered professionals and more than 4,000 registered companies on the portal to find job.

It should be noted that the profiles most in demand by companies in the sector were: bricklayer, labourer, formwork worker, site foreman and site manager. The geographical areas with the most job vacancies were Madrid, Galicia and Catalonia.

The professional profile of the person seeking employment in 2020 was male, aged between 46 and 55, unemployed, with basic education and training in occupational risk prevention by job and trade.

Participation in more than twenty European projects

During 2020, Fundación Laboral participated in a total of 22 international projects, within the framework of five European programmes (Erasmus+, Horizon 2020, AMIF, UIA, Interreg Poctefa) and was awarded a European Commission tender.

For the development of these projects related to employment, training, sustainability, innovation, BIM methodology, health and safety, circular economy and equality, it works together with 93 other institutions from 19 countries, leading 9 of these initiatives.