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The construction industry is facing a major labor shortage, but programs and people across the country are working locally to solve the problem. This series highlights grassroots efforts that help recruit the next generation of construction professionals. Read previous posts here.
Do you know of any groups that help attract workers to the construction industry? Let us know.
Virginia Tech hopes a new grant will help it streamline construction to address the affordable housing crisis in central Appalachia.
The university in Blacksburg, Virginia, announced last month that Virginia Center for Housing Research in the engineering faculty has received a $453,742 grant, along with the school’s Center for Economic and Community Engagement.
The Appalachian Regional Commission grant will help the Virginia Tech-led team “develop a comprehensive workforce training strategy” for modular construction, which the school says will reduce costs, waste and emissions with respect to traditional construction while offering affordable housing.
The team hopes to address the labor shortage by bringing middle and high school students to local factories and workplaces, hoping to develop workers with future careers in construction, specifically modular.
“Giving students an up-close look at careers available in industrial construction can create a tangible connection between classroom learning, real-world applications and their futures,” said Associate Director Sarah Lyon-Hill of CECE research development, in the magazine. liberation
After the grant is completed, the team can apply for $10 million in implementation funding
“In basic terms, we’re developing a circular economy for Appalachia based on housing,” said Andrew McCoy, associate director of Virginia Tech’s Myers-Lawson School of Construction. That means the team will study the region’s capacity for off-site construction by looking at past manufacturing operations, ideally leveraging that to build a workforce and new residences.
And McCoy said it’s not just residential construction that could benefit.
“The commercial angle is that historically, innovation has gone down from commercial to residential, with residential lagging behind,” he told Construction Dive. “There is such a need for residential innovation that we hope to reverse some of that trend.”
However, residential systems often benefit on a larger scale, as apartments or single-family homes can lend themselves to repeated designs, while commercial buildings tend to be unique and custom.
Extreme need for workers, jobs
Lyon-Hill described Central Appalachia as encompassing parts of Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia, according to the US Census Bureau — as “an engine of American industry,” in the statement. However, the region has suffered from economic problems.
“In the last six years alone, Appalachia has lost more than 50,000 mining jobs and 10,000 manufacturing jobs,” Lyon-Hill said.
Construction will inevitably industrialize, predicted Nol Browne, founder of Boston-based ADL Ventures, a business development firm focused on decarbonizing the construction, energy and transportation sectors and the lead partner of the industry for the subsidy.
“The construction industry cannot sustain the way its key drivers are trending,” Browne said in the statement. In fact, the labor pipeline in Appalachia is shrinking as demand for affordable housing soars, Browne said.
“This widening gap between supply and demand is exacerbated by evolving economic and social challenges such as the rising cost of materials, supply chain issues, shortages of skilled labor and the lack of technology integration, just to name a few,” he said.
Supply chain, social challenges and rising costs make this worse. Grants team members said workforce training is key to success.
“Even if we were to replace a large percentage of workers with robots, we would still have a labor crisis, the demand and the need is so dire,” McCoy told Construction Dive.
As a result, he said, the industry needs to increase the ability to deliver projects without “compromising” the existing workforce and also improve industry skills to provide them with job security, such as greater education in realization of modular projects.
“An added bonus will be if we can convince parents, and their children, of what could be an exciting, opportunity-filled and promising career path,” McCoy said.
