Description
Despite the proven benefits of using industrial construction (IC), it still only accounts for a small share of the U.S. construction market. This session will briefly review the benefits of IC and how it may be critical to tackling some of the most entrenched challenges in the construction industry today, including skilled worker shortages and safety concerns. We'll examine how the wider use of IC will impact the existing workforce—both negatively through displacement of workers, and positively through job creation, different working conditions, and younger and more diverse populations being drawn into the industry. We'll also look at what is needed to prepare the workforce to benefit from this transition, including training in needed skills. Steve Jones, Senior Director of Industry Insights Research at Dodge Data & Analytics (Dodge) will present findings from a recent study commissioned by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and conducted by Dodge and WSU.
Key Learnings
- Discover the key benefits of IC, as revealed by independent third-party research.
- Explore the impact that the larger transition to using IC approaches is having on the current U.S. workforce.
- Determine the best strategies to prepare the workforce to adapt to and benefit from an increase in the use of IC.
Speaker
- SJSteve JonesStephen Jones Senior Director, Industry Insights Research Dodge Construction Network Steve Jones leads the Industry Insights Research team at Dodge that conducts focused studies on how emerging economic, practice and technology trends are transforming the global design and construction industry. In addition to hundreds of speaking engagements around the world and numerous articles in industry publications, Steve is the Executive Editor of Dodge's SmartMarket Report series on key industry trends, which are distributed worldwide and frequently cited as authoritative references. Steve holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA from Johns Hopkins University. He has a track record of active leadership in many industry initiatives and serves as a judge for numerous industry awards. Before joining Dodge in 2003, Steve was Vice President of Primavera Systems (now part of Oracle), a global leader in project management software. Before that, Steve spent 19 years in creative and management roles with top architectural/engineering firms, most recently as a Principal and Board of Directors member with Burt Hill, one of the largest A/E firms in the US (now merged with Stantec).