• The UK has the lowest uptake of contract management training of any market surveyed, at 43 per cent, and UK professionals are consistently less convinced of its benefits than their global counterparts.
• New research from NEC Contracts, surveying more than 1,000 construction professionals across the UK, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Peru, finds that 85 per cent believe the right training is important to their role, but 61 per cent say there is a lack of investment in training across the industry.
• Just over half of professionals (54 per cent) have undertaken training in contract management, yet even among those trained, real skills gaps remain in the mechanisms that determine project outcomes.
• Skills gaps in contract management are linked to cost overruns (43 per cent), delays (37 per cent) and disputes (37 per cent) on real projects.

NEC Contracts has published Trained to Deliver: Training, Skills and the Future of Construction Contract Management, the third in a series of global research studies from the publisher of the leading suite of collaborative contracts. Conducted in early 2026, it is the first of NEC Contracts’ research studies to examine how training equips the people who deliver its projects, with a particular focus on contract management.

Belief in training is close to universal, with 85 per cent of professionals agreeing the right training is important to their role, consistently across every market. Investment does not follow: 61 per cent say there is a lack of investment in training across the industry, a gap the report says is doing real damage to how projects get delivered.

Rekha Thawrani OBE, Global Director of NEC Contracts, said: “People do not lack the ambition to work collaboratively. What they often lack is exposure, the chance to work through how a compensation event or an early warning actually plays out on a live project, before it matters.

“That is what proper contract training gives them, and it is why we built NEC Training around people who have used these contracts, not just taught them.”

The UK lags behind on almost every measure. Agreement that lifelong training is essential was lowest in the UK of any market, at 74 per cent, as was agreement on the importance of soft skills, at 71 per cent. UK professionals are also consistently less convinced of contract management training’s benefits: only 63 per cent agree it correlates with project success, against 75 per cent globally, and only 63 per cent agree it delivers a competitive advantage, against 77 per cent globally. The report frames this as a warning for an industry facing an ageing workforce, a persistent skills gap and ongoing difficulty attracting young people into construction.

A contract is not background knowledge, it is the operating system a project runs on, which is why contract management training behaves differently to most other professional development. Just over half of those surveyed (54 per cent) have undertaken it, most often to improve industry knowledge or competence. Among those trained, 75 per cent agreed that the level of training in contract management correlates directly with project success, and 93 per cent said it is beneficial for that training to be approved or accredited by the publisher of the contract. Skills gaps remain widespread even so: no more than 7 per cent of trained professionals reported zero skills gaps in any area tested, and the impacts show up on real projects, in cost overruns (43 per cent), delays (37 per cent), disputes (37 per cent) and poor team collaboration (35 per cent).

The full report, Trained to Deliver: Training, Skills and the Future of Construction Contract Management, is available to download at: www.neccontract.com/trainingreport