Here are the stories that caught my attention this week.

The New Hospital Programme is racing to get all 11 Wave 1 schemes into contract

The programme is pushing to have all eleven of its first-wave hospitals under formal delivery agreements by the end of July, with the ten contractors on the £37bn Hospital 2.0 Alliance framework, Kier, Laing O'Rourke, Morgan Sindall, Skanska, Willmott Dixon, Graham, Vinci/Sir Robert McAlpine's IHP joint venture and others, now paired to schemes. This is one of the biggest sources of standardised, long-run healthcare work in the country. For anyone building a career in healthcare construction or major projects, this is the pipeline to watch, and the demand for commercial and delivery talent will follow it.

CITB says we need 206,000 more workers by 2030

The CITB's new Construction Workforce Outlook puts the number at an average of 41,200 extra workers a year through to 2030, taking the workforce to around 2.68 million. The report is blunt that the skills gap is structural, not a blip. My take: this is the single biggest story for careers in our industry, it means opportunity for people entering and progressing, but it also means firms that get serious about retention and development will win the talent war.

June's PMI shows where the work actually is

The construction downturn eased very slightly in June (PMI 38.4, up from 38.2), but the headline masks a real split: housebuilding recorded its sharpest fall of the year and civil engineering its steepest since 2020, while commercial, infrastructure and data centres held up. If you're weighing your next move, the growth is in energy, water, transport and digital infrastructure, that's where the roles and the security are right now.

Contractors kept signing work despite the gloom

Plenty of live deals this week: Winvic signed a £112m-plus contract with Clarion's development arm Latimer, Farrans was appointed to a £30m terminal extension at Bristol Airport, and Galliford Try broke ground on a medical training centre for the University of Birmingham. A reminder that even in a soft market, good businesses are still winning and still hiring.

Steel tariffs land this month

The July steel tariff changes, a 50% rate and sharply reduced quotas across 20 product categories, are set to push up the floor price of steel in the UK. It's another cost pressure for tier-one contractors to absorb and manage, and worth understanding if you sit anywhere near commercial, procurement or estimating.

What caught your eye this week? Drop a comment if you have seen something I have missed or if any of these stories affect your part of the industry.

Sources: Building Better Healthcare / New Civil Engineer (New Hospital Programme); CITB Construction Workforce Outlook 2026 to 2030 via Construction News and Building; S&P Global UK Construction PMI (June 2026); The Construction Index contract news (Winvic, Farrans, Galliford Try); Arcadis UK Construction Market Outlook (steel tariffs).