By the Associated Builders and Contractors’ (ABC) estimates, the construction sector will have to attract about 546,000 additional workers on top of the normal pace of hiring this year to meet demand for labor.
“The construction industry must recruit hundreds of thousands of qualified, skilled construction professionals each year to build the places where we live, work, play, worship, learn and heal,” said ABC president and CEO Michael Bellaman, in a press release. “As the demand for construction services remains high, filling these roles with skilled craft professionals is vital to America’s economy and infrastructure rebuilding initiatives.”
Talent shortfalls continue to be one of the most challenging concerns for heavy civil contractors. In fact, one year ago, nearly two-thirds of respondents to FMI’s Heavy Civil Construction Index said they were at or above capacity given current resources. Since that time, a majority have said they continue to add backlogs faster than they are burning it, and in our most recent survey, more than 60% said that backlogs have grown since this time last year. Always in high demand, field leaders and project managers could become even harder to find, recruit and retain as the industry works to fill that 546,000 gap.
Facing increased opportunities as Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act-funded projects get underway, the heavy civil construction sector could find itself scrambling to fill field leader positions. Driven in part by a national unemployment rate that’s hovering at 54-year lows, the construction worker shortage is impacting project completion times and creating other challenges both on and off the jobsite. In fact, labor shortages were the second-most cited cause for project delays in the 2022 AGC/FMI Risk Survey, and lack of skilled field leaders is a large part of the problem.
More specifically, nearly two-thirds of CEOs surveyed for FMI’s second quarter 2022 Construction Industry Round Table (CIRT) reported difficulties finding field managers. The shortfall isn’t new, but it is expected to impact crews in the years to come. Field leaders, especially those with decades of experience and knowledge, are often tasked with executing projects on shorter timeframes and managing jobs with fewer resources.
Great Field Leaders Are Made
Masters of productivity, logistics, personnel management, site planning, financial management and project scheduling, great field leaders are made over years of on-the-job experience. On large civil and heavy construction projects, these professionals are often responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars’ of work. They’re also dealing with unrealistic project schedules, staffing difficulties of their own and the challenges associated with leading teams while also executing work.