Reshaping the Construction Industry

Last month Jim Kollaer shared a link to a blog on the website Life of an Architect by Bob Borson in which all the things that a drywall contractor carries in his bucket were laid out and identified.  The Borson article is part of an interesting series which shows the things people in various occupations carry with them in order to do the work they do.  Jim’s blog post here on Construction Citizen generated a comment from Terry Holcombe, a drywall superintendent at Marek Brothers Systems in Houston.  Terry wrote:“This looks like a good starter bucket for a residential Drywaller!  There is another kind of Drywaller out there as well: it is a commercial Drywaller that does all buildings not just residential.  He would have most everything this guy has but a few more items like corded and cordless hanging screw guns and a cordless impact screw gun instead of a cordless drill.  

Construction companies can easily run into problems when they hire the wrong people.  Not only is it a money problem, but it also affects productivity and safety.  Replacing someone restarts the hiring cycle, taking time and energy away from more productive work.  To avoid costly hiring mistakes many companies have moved from reliance on educated guessing to better selection processes.  They have done that because according to the National Center For Construction Education and Research (NCCER):Traditional hiring methods (resume, interview and background checks) only provide a 14% likelihood of a successful hiring decision.The cost of employee turnover can range from one half to four times the employer’s annual salary and benefits.People are good at convincing hiring managers that they are right for the job even when they know they might not be.Many times you won’t realize you’ve made a poor hiring decision until the team member has already become an emotional part of your team. With the right tools and know-how you can improve the chances of hiring success by as much as 75%. 

The Construction Citizen team has written many times about the growing controversy over whether college is becoming obsolete and actually a liability for many in America.  While pursuing a four-year degree is still a great option for a lot of people, there is growing consensus that it's certainly not the best option for everyone.  That's evidenced by the fact that not only is there a college debt crisis, but you can now point to one career option after another that requires a college degree but doesn't pay anything close to what you'd need to make to pay off that debt in a reasonable amount of time while also trying to support a family.In their humorous way, Buzzfeed just published a list of the top 25 low-paying jobs that require college degrees, and some of them might surprise you.  Marriage and family therapists, biological technicians, and journalists make less than $50K per year.  

AGC Smart Brief noted that David Benjamin and a team at Columbia University are developing bacteria-based processes that could be produced as commercially available construction materials within the next 8-10 years, showing us that quantum change is going on behind the scenes today that will ultimately change the face of construction as we know it.The referenced article is called Designing and Building with Bacteria Could be the Future of Architecture, and it originally appeared in Inhabitat, a publication that features new and leading-edge discoveries in a number of fields that will impact our lives and industries in the near future.We think that whether you are in the industry today or just entering the industry, you should pay close attention to some of the “new stuff” being talked about here and in other forums.