Labor shortages. It’s not a new topic in the construction industry and one that has not seen much relief over the past few years. In a season when construction in booming, general contractors are building bigger and building more. What is new, however, are the solutions being explored to relieve, if not correct, these labor shortage challenges.
The issue of labor is a shared problem for contractors and clients: a lack of available labor to build and a shortage of workforce talent resulting from COVID-19. For contractors, an aging labor pool of construction workers is no help as they face the hurdle of needing to accelerate the training of younger staff while having trouble attracting and retaining talent.
Despite a rising number of projects that have grown in complexity and size and the mounting pressure that arises from that demand, JE Dunn Principal Architect, Tammi Hill, points out one constant that emerges when projects are boiled down: People. It’s people, Hill says, that drive projects and businesses and nothing can substitute the human touch.
“To establish an environment where people want to work, the design of each new build must consider the worker’s experience at the jobsite as well as the future workforce at the facility when the project is complete,” Hill says. “There’s no better way to accomplish this than to go straight to the source and engage the current workforce.”
Read more of Hill’s insights in Construction Executive magazine below.
