Construction Citizen covers the imminent launch of the Construction Career Collaborative or C3.  Basically, C3 is the cooperative effort of GCs and subcontractors to take the steps necessary to build a sustainable workforce for the construction industry.  This may come as a surprise to folks outside the construction industry, but its skilled workforce is shrinking.  There are not enough new workers coming up in the construction industry to replace the older workers retiring or leaving the industry.  As Construction Citizen puts it:

It started with industry leaders who realized that the skilled workforce had steadily decreased over the past several years, and unless changes were implemented, the commercial construction industry would soon face a significant shortage of the skilled craft workers needed.  The article states:

"Everyone agreed that if the construction industry was serious about confronting the workforce shortage, two key things needed to happen: employers needed to offer a competitive wage and benefits, and workers needed access to craft and safety training.  In an industry accustomed to cutting costs, everyone also agreed there was only one way to make sure that these things happened: owners had to create the demand.  This initiative – owner-mandated fair pay, benefits, and craft and safety training – became C3.”

Jim Stevenson, CEO of Bellows Construction and Chairman of AGC Houston, explains why owners will benefit from C3 as much as the workers and contractors:

“If you look at the life cycle of a building, the actual construction cost is only about 10 percent of what the building will ultimately cost.  If you look at it that way, C3 isn’t really costing you anything.  You get a better-built building and fewer problems.  You pay more up front, but you don’t end up dealing with nearly as many maintenance and quality issues.”

Jerry Nevlud, President and CEO of AGC Houston, explains how C3 will work with owners participation:

“Owners will basically say, ‘This is a C3 project and everyone on the project must be C3 compliant.’  Each craft worker would have OSHA 10-hour training, and each supervisor would have 30-hour training.  Contractors who bid on a C3 job will need to make sure they’re compliant within a certain amount of time.”

Pete Dawson, senior vice president for facilities services at Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH), spoke about the reasons an owner might choose to participate in C3, particularly in cases where quality and safety are vitally important to the owner:

“If this program can create some sort of compensation and training program that attracts and retains people so they’re available when an owner like TCH needs them, that’s important.  A workforce made up of people who have chosen construction as a career is good.  If it costs a little more to have that workforce in place, that’s a good investment for us.  We never close down.  We’re occupied 24/7.  There’s never a good time to come back and redo something.  It costs a lot more if we run into problems that are caused by a workforce that is not as competent or qualified.”

C3 is the construction industry effort to step up and meet that challenge.  This is an effort that will benefit everyone from the owner down the line to the construction worker on the job.  

• Login to post comments

        Tweet