Skip to main content

Is silicon valley the answer to attracting the next generation in construction?

Use technology at jobsites

The root of the labor shortage goes back to the Great Recession of the late 2000s when nearly two million people exited the construction industry. A recent industry survey found that 70 percent of firms had trouble filling positions, and 75 percent felt the situation would only get worse next year.

When students - who are graduating with an appetite to work for Silicon Valley startups - close their eyes, they think about construction as a hard-working, hands-on industry, which it absolutely is. Construction technology is already making a huge impact on improving quality, reducing risk, shortening schedules, and improving margins. And by showing how advancing technology is at the forefront of solving problems, it will offer the promise of exciting, impactful, and innovative work.

The construction industry needs to show the next generation the impact it can have on something seen, lived-in, and inhabited by real people. It’s also about bringing the sexy back to construction, which means bringing cutting-edge technology to the forefront.

There so much happening with software and technology on job sites right now, both automating and supplementing what workers are doing on-site. General contractors are now using platforms such as Forge to create rich data ecosystems on worksites, linking computer models, on-site workers, project management, and back-end record-keeping.

Job sites may soon become high-tech, open-air factories: Prefabrication, modular housing, and 3D printing are revolutionizing the industry and creating more efficient, computer-aided building methods. The innovative use of technology in the industry is a compelling story, but construction firms need to do more outreach to students and prospective workers. General contractors and commercial developers should link up with universities and use these programs to create joint programs that allow these students to apply and pilot new construction technology.

A large number of building associations, including the Association of Builders and Contractors and the Association of General Contractors, should continue to reach out via their student chapters. It’s also ripe for disruption in terms of diversity, another way to appeal to younger workers and expand the pool of potential employees. The industry needs to reach into the education sector, inspire both boys and girls, and be open and proud of diversity.

This time of rapid change is an opportunity to transform the industry and the makeup of the workforce for the better.

ProsConnected.com

You just PROVED that our automated marketing solutions work.



Automated Marketing Solution
Social Media Marketing & SEO


START NOW


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No Money to Start? No Problem. Try These 5 Options to Fund Your Business.

Ready For Anything Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. You might be limited to a strict budget to start a business, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have any options. It is possible to start a business with very little money, if you have the right combination of skills, work ethic and marketing know-how. According to Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup , “To succeed in a business project, especially one you’re excited about, it helps to think carefully about all the skills you have that could be helpful to others and particularly about the combination of those skills.” Related:  How to Start a Business With (Almost) No Money Follow these simple guidelines to fund your business when you have little to no money. No Money to Start? No Problem. Try These 5 Options to Fund Your Business. Yes, making something does take an initial cost in supplies, but often, these products can be sold...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Morning After: 'Sonic the Hedgehog' got rescheduled

Employees and partners are already testing its streaming capabilities. Every Xbox One title will be playable on Project xCloud When Project xCloud debuts, it'll be capable of streaming any of the system's games (including backward compatible ones) out of the gate without developers needing to make any changes. Microsoft also says when a developer updates an Xbox One game, those changes will automatically apply to Project xCloud versions. However, changes to the developer's kit let a game know when it's being played from the cloud to adjust for different types of displays or run multiplayer games on a single server. The teeth, the legs, the teeth, the eyes, the teeth. 'Sonic the Hedgehog' movie delayed to fix nightmare-inducing design Following a statement by director Jeff Fowler that changes are "going to happen," Paramount pushed back the release date three months to give the filmmakers "a little more time to make Sonic just right." No...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Large Magellanic Cloud comes alive in a 240 megapixel image

Ciel Austral is a team of five very enthusiastic amateur French astronomers, Jean Claude Canonne, Philippe Bernhard, Didier Chaplain, Nicolas Outters, and Laurent Bourgon, who own and operate their own telescope in northern Chile. The 14400×14200 image was stitched together from nearly 4,000 separate images that required 1,060 hours (6.3 weeks) of exposures shot from July 2017 to January 2019. It took two computers eight days to stitch together the photos, and a further two months to process the 620 gigabytes of data. If you could warp yourself to the Magellanic Cloud, it wouldn't look like the dreamy, painterly image pictured above. Much of the image is made up of false colors that show the different elements present in the image. Different colors represent hydrogen, sulfur and oxygen III, emphasizing the cloud-like high-density gas nebulae in a way that a standard visible light image can't. The image shows the birth and death of stars and the aftermath, including super...
Post a Comment
Read more