As Barbados ramps up national housing development across the island, a critical shortage of skilled construction labor has pushed the state-run National Housing Corporation (NHC) to accelerate targeted recruitment and skills training programs for young local workers, NHC General Manager Ian Gill announced in a statement Friday.
Gill made the announcement during the official groundbreaking ceremony for a new 34-unit residential development in Deanstown, St. James. He emphasized that the ongoing boom in construction activity across Barbados has created an urgent gap in skilled talent that cannot be left unaddressed. “With the rapid expansion of construction projects nationwide, we are facing a looming shortage of skilled workers,” Gill explained. “Our goal is to train young enrollees quickly, so they can gain the hands-on expertise needed to bolster NHC’s workforce and keep our housing development targets on track.”
To fill this skills gap, the NHC has partnered with two leading local technical training institutions: the Samuel Jackman Prescod Institute of Technology and the national Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) program. The partnership has already yielded early results: the NHC recently hired 10 new young workers who completed their training through the TVET pathway, Gill confirmed, adding that building a pipeline of young skilled talent remains the corporation’s top priority.
Among NHC’s most successful workforce development initiatives is the Barbados Construction Gateway Initiative, a program designed to train new entrants and connect them to long-term opportunities in the construction sector. Gill noted that dozens of program graduates have gone on to secure permanent contractor roles with the NHC, many of whom still work with the corporation today. The program even proved its value during the national response to Hurricane Elsa, when Gateway Initiative trainees stepped in to support emergency reconstruction work across the island. “It is an awesome initiative that has delivered real results for our organization and for young Barbadians looking for stable careers,” Gill said.
Beyond workforce development, the NHC is also undergoing a broad internal overhaul of its planning division, integrating new digital tools and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence to modernize operations. “Digitization has completely transformed how we approach planning and drafting work,” Gill explained. “New digital platforms streamline workflows, and even artificial intelligence can now assist with core drafting tasks, letting teams make adjustments faster and more efficiently than ever before.”
The digital upgrade is part of a broader government mandate to expand the NHC’s role across Barbados’ public sector. Gill confirmed the Mia Mottley administration’s official intention to reposition the NHC as the central planning agency for all central government departments and state-owned enterprises. Under the new mandate, the NHC will take on responsibility for planning all public infrastructure projects across every government agency in the country, a mandate that corporation leadership is preparing to fully deliver on in the coming months.