Growing from a position of strength

These are exciting times for our industry and for UKWA. They are challenging times too.

As far as UKWA is concerned many of our long established officials are approaching retirement age and one of my tasks is to persuade younger members of our industry to commit to playing an active role in the Association’s evolution.

The Association is also conscious that it operates in a commercial world and, to ensure that we continue to offer our members the kind of services that will deliver the most benefit to their business we are currently engaged with Westminster University on a study programme – the main objective of which is to establish the needs of all categories of UKWA’s member companies, to help us develop a whole range of new value added services to ensure that membership of UKWA continues to represent an excellent value proposition. 

The survey has highlighted some of the broader issues facing the warehousing sector. For example, it appears that there is a general lack of understanding of new concepts within smaller warehousing companies with UKWA’s smaller members reporting that they are usually reactive and fire-fighting, overwhelmed with admin work and the time available for researching the market for new solutions and technologies is insufficient.

It also showed that there is a massive move amongst warehouses to reduce costs, wastage and paper use, however this can be achieved only with investments in technology, where funding might be an issue. Even in cases where plans and funding for WMS implementation are sufficient, members are often confused about where to start from.

The shortage of skilled staff in the sector was also flagged up: Some members have issues with finding HGV drivers, others are in need of more highly educated floor staff while some companies reported difficulties with finding and training staff to an acceptable level their client facing personnel. 

Formal qualifications and experience are valued, however awareness of sources of information and how to assess those is seen as great advantage for potential new employees. 

In the South-East (London) area there is higher demand and insufficient supply of machine, forklift and crane operators.

While developing a national qualification is time consuming and expensive, if such a qualification is developed, some members declared that they would encourage their staff to take the qualification.

Generally speaking, the logistics industry is a dynamic place to be at the moment with the rapid growth of e-commerce and the development of ports within the UK just two of the factors that are impacting on the way the sector operates.

So it is perhaps surprising that the industry still faces a skills shortage. To some extent, the skills shortage is an inevitable consequence of the image problem the sector has been struggling with in recent years and it is essential that logistics – or supply chain – call it what you will, grabs the attention of our brightest school and university leavers and encourages more young people to make a conscious decision to enter the industry as a conscious career move.

UKWA will be working with partners such as Skills for Logistics in an attempt to address this issue.

We will also be seeking to promote our members within the corridors of power. For such a nationally important industry, the logistics industry has, it seems, always struggled to get its voice heard within Government departments and the ability to engage with Ministers on a broad range of issues is something that UKWA will be looking to develop.

UKWA will also be representing members interests in light of the efforts the Business Sprinkler Alliance (a collection of trade bodies and other groups) to drive a change in the use sprinklers within warehouses.

At present only warehouses over 20,000 square metres but there have long been demands for the mandatory installation of sprinkler devices within all new warehouses and, in some cases, for warehouse operators to be compelled to add them to existing facilities.

Among the third party warehousing and logistics industry which UKWA represents, the words ‘sprinklers in warehouses’ usually raise eyebrows and any talk of ‘retrospective fitting of sprinklers in warehouses’ is guaranteed to get warehouse operators’ blood pressure creeping up.

There are a number of practical problems that prevent the use of sprinklers in some types of warehouse and in some localities, so while UKWA welcomes any steps that seek to add protection to property and people, we will be doing our best to engage with the Business Sprinkler Alliance and other interested parties to ensure that any proposed changes to existing regulations are sensible, practical and applied with a light hand.

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