This paper utilises data from a comprehensive survey of construction firms in Northern Ireland to investigate the extent to which industry level skill shortages arise either as a result of a mismatch between existing industry employment structure and training provision and / or a general failure amongst training providers to keep pace with technological change within the industry. The work re-confirmed the findings of earlier studies that a mismatch existed between the composition of construction training and the employment structure of the industry. However, there was only weak evidence to support the hypothesis that such a mismatch was inhibiting the performance of firms by raising the incidence of skill shortages within the sector. It was concluded that there was sufficient commonality between those trades specifically catered for within the training structure and those that lay outside it, to allow for the transfer of workers between the two groups, thus tending to reduce the incidence of skill shortage within those occupations that lie outside the formal training structure. The evidence also suggested that skill shortages in the sector would be reduced as a result of introducing a multi-skilled element to the training structure to specifically cater for the rise in prefabricated building techniques within the industry. However, any large scale shift towards multi- skilled training, in order to service this expanding component, would tend to reduce worker productivity levels, but we are less clear on the final impacts on overall industry level value added. Nevertheless, the research does suggest that there are grounds for caution. Given that multi-skilled labour would tend to be utilised within the relatively low value added context of prefabricated building processes, as opposed to achieving potentially higher value added gains through improvements in the co- ordination of on-site operations, it is recommended that any multi-skilled training programmes should be introduced in parallel with existing traditional craft training methods in order to preserve industry skill levels and maintain worker productivity.