Help Wanted

The labor pinch is being felt across the state.

By Sheila Bacon

Photo by Greg Pickens

When Stanley Cotgreave bids a large job, there’s always one major concern on his mind: Will he be able to find enough skilled labor?

The president of the union-affiliated general contractor Page & Associates, based in Amarillo, struggles to find good laborers and supervisors for his jobsites. It’s no wonder. According to a Texas Workforce Commission statement, the Amarillo, Lubbock and Odessa region experienced the second-lowest unemployment rate in the state in October at 3.1%.

“For the last couple years, there have been no carpenters sitting on the bench in our community,” Cotgreave says. “The better hands are already working.”

The labor pinch is being felt not only in Amarillo, but throughout Texas.

 “When our guys come in for their quarterly board meetings, we hear it all the time,” says Michael Chatron, executive vice president for the Texas Building Branch of the Associated General Contractors. The association, which is based in Austin, is the government affairs office representing the 11 AGC commercial building chapters throughout Texas. “The workforce shortage is an issue in all corners of the state,” Chatron adds.

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Nancy Jones, executive director of the Associated Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors of Texas, recalls a recent plight of one of the association’s past presidents. The president, also the owner of a large plumbing contracting firm, was having a hard time finding enough skilled workers to start a high-profile job that required a significant amount of labor. When the job was about to start and his force was still lacking, the owner found himself out in the field.

“That’s not the first time I’ve heard a story like that,” Jones says.

Plenty of Jobs, Not Enough Labor The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the construction industry nationwide is expected to add approximately 1 million new jobs between 2002 and 2012; an increase of 15%. With total unemployment expected to reach 7.8 million by 2012, the construction industry is predicted to be among the economy’s top 10 largest sources of job growth.

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Certain construction industries--particularly those that require considerable training--are expected to see more of a dearth than others. The BLS predicts 154,000 new jobs for electricians, 122,000 new jobs for carpenters and 47,000 new jobs for construction managers by 2012.

Locally, the demand for construction industry workers is growing as well. According to the Texas Workforce Commission, construction employment posted a significant gain of 2,100 jobs in October 2007, bringing the number of jobs added in construction since October 2006 to 10,800.

Much of the current construction industry workforce is part of the baby-boomer generation, Chatron says, and those folks are aging and starting to retire. Fewer high school graduates are entering the construction trades, contributing to the shortage of skilled laborers.

“When our generation came up through high school, there wasn’t that big of a push to go to college,” Chatron adds. “It was more acceptable from a social perspective to learn a trade and make a good living doing that. Now, more kids are encouraged to go to college.”

Part of the problem lies with the perception that college is the only avenue to a successful future, Jones says.

“It’s hard to get young people interested unless the trades are already in their family,” she adds. High school counselors are encouraging college educations and forgetting that the construction industry can offer a number of good, high-paying jobs. “Manual trades are just not that sexy.”

Doing Something About It Matt Papenfus, the Dallas-based vice president and general manager of Turner Construction Co.’s south central region, says the workforce shortage is affecting the Texas construction industry across the board. The amount of work is stressing understaffed subcontractors, who are forced to hire more people who may not have worked with their company in the past, Papenfus says. This increases the subs’ risk; driving up prices that are passed down the line, he adds.

On the management side, Turner is finding itself actively competing for new college graduates alongside dozens of other large general contracting firms. Turner’s skilled superintendents are also being eyed by the competition in the tight marketplace.

Turner is bumping up its intern program at area colleges and universities in an effort to obtain new talent. Turner offered 25 internships in its Texas offices in 2007, double what it offered in 2006, Papanfus says.

At Texas A&M, Turner associates offer the university’s construction management school a multisession program in which employees discuss particular aspects of the construction management career path.

In the field, Turner is careful to schedule its projects well in advance in order to give subcontractors enough time to assemble competent teams.

“We try to engage the subs early in the process so we can lock in their ‘A’ teams and they can account for their backlog,” Papenfus says. “We also work closely with the subs to develop relationships so we can get their best foremen.”

In an attempt to draw more workers into the plumbing trades, the APHCC-TX is partnering with the Construction Education Foundation of North Texas to offer a new state apprenticeship program this spring. Unlike most apprenticeship programs that require regular evening class attendance over four years, the new program consolidates training into two, two-week sessions a year for four years.

Students attend classes 10 hours a day, four days a week. Sessions are ongoing, so if employers are willing to give their employees additional time off, trainees can decrease the duration of the program by attending additional sessions.

Jones says she is hopeful that the consolidated approach will lower the high dropout rate associated with more traditional apprenticeship training programs in which students work all day and attend classes in the evenings.

“The average age of our workforce is 52,” Jones says. “We just knew that we had to do something.”

The new program is modeled after a successful apprenticeship training program in place in California, she says.

APHCC-TX and the Construction Education Foundation are preparing to send out brochures and other information on the new program to members soon in preparation for the start of classes next month.

A Different Approach While many Texas contractors and associations are working on ways to attract more workers to the trades, others concerned about the state of the industry are approaching the issue from a different angle.

Cindy Menches, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s civil engineering department, has participated in a number of studies that focus on increasing the efficiency of workers and finding ways to increase automation so the industry will be able to continue to function in the face of a waning workforce.

“There’s been a lot of research on the academic side about how to increase efficiency and how to create tools to augment manpower,” Menches says.

Research on the use of unmanned machines that use sensors instead of human operators is in the early stages, Menches says. She teaches classes in project planning, scheduling and project management for disasters.

Other studies have centered on multiskilling, or training workers to perform multiple jobs.

“Construction has traditionally been a single-skill workforce,” Menches says. “Now we’re facing the possibility of needing to be a multiskilled workforce.”

Whatever the approach, contractors, association leaders and educators continue to try and augment an industry that is so crucial to Texas yet painfully understaffed.