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A shortage of full-time project managers over the next three years will play into the hands of IT contractors to offer an anticipated daily rate of £700 before the end of 2006. Already the UK’s freelance IT specialists working in project management are earning up to £65 an hour, according to the Association of Technology Staffing Companies (ATSCo). Ann Swain, chief executive, yesterday revealed that the average pay for a freelance project manager is £50 an hour – representing more than a 10 per cent climb since 2004. “Fewer IT graduates and an absence of IT training means there will be a shortage of well-qualified experienced project managers in the UK during 2008/09,” Ms Swain said in an interview with Contractor UK. “Therefore the demand will come to the contract market.” Phil Clarke, managing director of IT and Telecoms at Hudson, expects upward pressure on rates to pay freelance project leads between £550 and £700 a day within the next eight months. Last year, he said project managers earned an average rate of £500, for attributes and skills that will be more in demand from 2008 than the need to recruit overseas IT workers. His comments come in response to the Institute for the Management of Information Systems, which last week warned that the shortage of project managers will drive UK clients to hire foreign freelancers. “I can’t actually see the predicted influx of foreign IT contractors as having a huge impact. Many clients request project managers to be accredited to Prince2 which may be more difficult to achieve if you are based outside the UK,” Mr Clarke said. “There is also the issue of obtaining work permits for non-EC nationals, and the language/cultural issues are critical to project management success.” ATSCo expects some PM roles to potentially be exported to workers outside the EU when flagship projects such as national identity cards, The Olympic Games and the NHS take off in 2008/09. On the continent, the Association predicts client companies “will be looking…but may not find the skill sets that the UK will require.” “There are no technical skills at this moment in time listed as ‘skill short’ officially by the Home Office,” explained Ann Swain. “This of course may change in the future, but the biggest risk facing contractors and agents in the UK is the prospect of projects themselves either being outsourced offshore, or indeed being outsourced on-shore to Indian software companies which can simply bring in hundreds of thousands of workers on intra-company transfers.” Agents at Hudson are “absolutely right” to say the cultural/language skills intrinsic to UK project leaders would keep them at the top of client companies’ wishlists, Ms Swain added. “The reality is project management is a communications orientated job, often more so than a technical job,” she said. “Project managers need to manage the needs of the project and its people to ensure delivery is in the right timeframe. Therefore language is obviously a huge obstacle for any IT contractor from overseas.” Meanwhile the industry watchdog, The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) says any influx of freelance IT workers is so far failing to adversely impact contractor rates. “The feedback from our ICT Sector members is that rates are fairly stable and any overseas competition is not having such a downward impact on paid rates. “A lot of members also think freelance rates will start to pick up in the near future so overall the REC is less sure about the negative impact on pay,” said Tom Hadley, director of external relations. He claims the shortage of PMs is escalated by the fact that some agencies are becoming exasperated through telling employers, ‘trust me this person has a slight gap in their skill set but it can be easily addressed.’ “At the moment, there is a mindset among employers that says ‘we need someone who is the absolute finished article, and if that means getting someone in from overseas then so be it,’” Mr Hadley said. “Whereas [agents insist] it would be a fairly easy gap to cover through training. This is a mindset that perhaps the recruitment industry working with employers can help to address.” As a result, the Confederation sees incoming technology projects like London 2012, “as a massive hook and opportunity for the IT sector to really enhance workers’ skills and address some of the shortages that exist.” ATSCo has come up against the same mindset. Without tackling it head on, the UK risks an ongoing battle to find skilled senior technology leaders. “We are suffering from a problem that the UK has always had, but it’s worse now by employers not spending money on training or developing good technical staff,” said Ms Swain. “The question is, ‘Who will be the contractors of the future?’ Corporations are famous for asking, ‘what if I spend all this money on my IT staff and they go,’ I like to reply, ‘what if you don’t spend any money on training and they stay?’ There is no question this mindset is dominating the current marketplace.” The Association revealed contractors wanting to earn top rates should pursue London-based contracts, as across the capital, “rates are really flying because there is a shortage of IT people with decent skill sets.” It added, “The biggest growth from a contract rate perspective is anything to do with placements in the City – and that’s not finance, it is simply City-based contracts. These are the areas where rates are moving up and the upward pace is not being exerted by anything else.” Apr 26, 2006 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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