Through national tender, a consortium of the Construction Knowledge Centre, Yorkshire Forward, CITB and Leeds Metropolitan University awarded VT (now Babcock) Research the research contract to produce the first quantification of the contribution of the construction sector to the regional economy.

A variety of primary and secondary methodologies were employed to meet the demands of the brief. In order to fulfil such a challenging brief, the project management team broke down the tasks into geographic areas, time series and sub-sectors. One of the first tasks was to map the sector and its supply chain after which it became clear that the industry accounted for around 15% of all employment in the region.

The 6-month project delivered the first regional baseline for the construction industry and provided recommendations for future action. The report raised crucial issues relating to education and training, labour markets and economics, procurement and public policy along with many others.