A critical assessment of the challenges of developing the Malaysian construction workforce through training

Imbued with the conviction that training is central in increasing the numbers of competent contractors´ construction workforce, many initiatives were mooted by the Malaysian construction industry to improve training. Notwithstanding this and the training emphasis in the Construction Industry Master Plan (CIMP), there have been frequent arguments that some of the training provisions offered are somewhat inadequate and ineffective. This paper presents the review and the analysis of the training offered to the Malaysian contracting workforce. The findings suggest that meeting the training needs of all the contractors´ workforce is very complex because construction projects are populated with many variables of types and size of construction projects and people. This tends to render the training, when not correctly designed to be ineffective. A holistic conception of training is offered as insight to guide for the industry to augment the training provisions for the construction workforce.