There’s a new wave coming in the construction industry and it is called workforce development. Although most contractors invest in their people through training, if the major construction owners have their way, and they are the ones with the money, a well-documented aggressive workforce development program will soon become mandatory.
The Construction Users Roundtable (CURT) is a gathering of major private construction consumers—companies such as utilities, manufacturers, and oil producers. Combined, CURT members represent nearly $200 billion a year in construction purchasing power and are “a driving force for continuous and significant improvement throughout the construction industry.” During a panel session at the February 2019 CURT National Conference, prominent CURT members laid out their strategy on workforce development.
“Owners have to be the solution!” said Jim Ellis, Global General Manger of Engineering and Project Management for Sabic and current CURT president. “The crisis is now! Our C-Suite leaders must champion workforce development as a corporate value; they must be the drivers. At one point several years ago, owners decided that safety must be the top priority on job sites and worked together to unleash innovation and it worked. We need to bring that same approach to workforce development and insist that all of our contractors are investing 1% of the project labor budget in training and workforce development.”
To make this happen, CURT has developed, through its Labor Risk Management (LRM) Program, a way to prequalify and select contractors partly based on their commitment to workforce development. “Owners need to lead and have an expectation for contractors to become engaged in workforce development,” said Eddie Clayton, Contracting and Workforce Strategy Manager for the Southern Co., a major electric utility in the southeast U.S., and chair of CURT’s Workforce Development Committee. CURT’s engagement criteria (the Contractors’ Workforce Development Assessment) will require contractor’s to show that they have addressed the following:
o Forecast their labor demand and supply (using the Construction Labor Market Analyzer)
o Assessed the available third-party workforce development tools
o Looked at workforce diversity
o Are engaging non-journeyman participation, including trainees and apprentices
o Are assessing their current and needed skills
o Are directly involved in training program development
Construction Industry Institute (CII) data has shown that each $1 invested in training has a return on investment of $3, including more than a 25% improvement in safety. “We simply need to make workforce development a condition of employment,” said Ed Luckenbach, Field Execution Manager for Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. “That will catch the attention of contractors!”
