The Future of the Construction Workforce

JIM ROGERS: OK. Welcome, everybody, to The Future of the Construction Workforce. I'm Jim Rogers. I'm going to be talking for the next 30 or 40 minutes or so on what I see as some of the future challenges and issues along with some proposed solutions to help us as we move forward in our kind of evolving and ever-changing construction industry. Before we get started, I've got our standard AU safe harbor statement. If you have any questions, you can take a look at that for just a minute.

All right. And then we'll just go ahead and jump right in. So right now today, this is what I see, unfortunately, as the future of construction. I think that we have a labor problem, I think that we have a skills gap, and I think that we have an image issue. And I think that probably it's not going out on a limb to say that many of you watching would agree with me on all three of these.

Our labor problem, whether it's the US, North America, around the world, I think our labor problem is well documented. We definitely have a shortage of both skilled trades and management in the construction industry.

And on both sides, again, we have a skills gap. We've got a lot of older individuals in the industry that have those skills. We've got some younger individuals entering the industry that need those skills. And the gap between those, unfortunately, is big and probably getting bigger. So we'll talk about that for a little bit.

I also think that we have an image issue, and I think that it's something that we need to acknowledge in the industry and begin to address. And by image issue, I mean people look at the construction industry as dirty, nontechnical, something that you do temporarily. And all those things are really not necessarily true, or at least they're not the only aspects of the industry that people should be focusing on.

But I really do think that we have an image issue. And moving forward, if we're going to solve both our labor problem and our skills gap, we need to acknowledge that image issue and address it so that we can move forward. So let's talk about that a little bit more as we continue the presentation here and talk about what some of the solutions to that issue might be.

One of the things that I think is-- I'll call it somewhat new in the construction industry is the adoption of technology. Now, I know we've been adopting technology in the industry for really many years, but I think if there is any one positive thing that the pandemic did to the construction industry, it's that it really forced us to accelerate the adoption of technology.

And I think in the last five years in particular, we've seen adoption of technology at a much more rapid pace than we have in the previous, say, two decades combined. We have more technology available to us, whether that's software and things that help us collaborate, check-in-type things. We have technology that allows easier documentation of conditions on job sites, easier communication of these things to the workforce.

And then the one that I've been talking about and continue to talk about, which is just the digitization of the entire construction industry. And I'm not talking about the design side. We talk about AEC. I think the engineers and the architects for the most part are there. They've got work to do on 3D and on their BIM designs.

We in the construction industry I think are still catching up a little bit just on the 2D side. We're still using paper drawings out there, and we've got some construction industry partners that have digitized and are using things like Autodesk Construction Cloud to move away from the paper blueprints and move over to that digital drawing phase of the construction industry.

But again, I'm seeing a big gap in the people that are doing that and everybody else that is still on the digital drawings. And all of this technology, whether it's digital drawings, robotics, laser scanning, all of this technology represents a huge opportunity in our industry. It offers us an opportunity to, among other things, address that image problem.

And it really offers us an opportunity to begin to make this a better place to work, an easier place to work, and get rid of some of those-- I'll talk about this throughout the presentation-- get rid of some of those 70-hour workweeks that are, quite frankly, killing our workforce. It's just not sustainable. Technology presents a huge opportunity to fix that.

However, it also represents a big challenge. In some respects it widens that skills gap because now we're adding new skills that we need. Again, both our construction management personnel and our skilled labor personnel now need to add technology and digital savvy to their skills toolbox, if you will.

So again, both an opportunity and a challenge. I think the other opportunity, though, is that as we adopt more technology, it will help us sort of revitalize our image, and it will help us attract a more diverse workforce which will give us that larger pool of people to pull from. And quite frankly, that is what we need in the industry right now. We just need a larger pool of people that is interested and willing to look at the construction industry as a career, a lifetime career. We need that pool to expand.

And what I'll talk about later on in the presentation as well is, quite frankly, we've begun to address expanding that pool to include women in construction. We certainly have companies out there that are making strides and advances in this area. But that is something we need to look at much harder and something we need to take many more additional steps to address.

Again, we need to broaden that pool of people that's interested in construction. And quite simply, if we add women to that pool, that pool can easily double. So something we need to look at as we continue on.

So let's look at the challenge. Let's kind of stick with that adoption of technology and what it does to help us in the industry, but let's look at it from, what are the challenges here?

And quite frankly, I think one of the big challenges as we adopt more and more technology is we need to do it. We absolutely need to do it. But we need to do it without alienating our current workforce.

And the question that you see up on the screen here is, why do we care? And I've talked to plenty of people that look at this and say, you know, I don't care. The current workforce, the older workforce, if they're not on board, if they're not going to adopt technology, if they're not going to evolve and help us with digitizing our workflows and lean thinking and get on board with alternative project delivery methods like IPD, if they're not going to do anything to help us with that, if they're going to stand in our way, let them age out and retire. Why do we care?

Well, we do care. And you know, I think we care a lot, or we should care a lot because ignoring them, letting them age out without capturing their skills and their knowledge and passing that on to the next generation is, I think, going to be one of our biggest challenges in the coming decades.

And I kind of turn to this guy here that you see on the screen, Mike Rowe. He talks a lot about the construction industry. Talks a lot about attracting people to the construction industry.

And this is several interviews-- in several interviews he's given lately, he's talked about this. Seven million able-bodied men have checked out of the workforce. Seven million. They've just checked out. They're done. They're not coming back.

And we need that trend to not continue in the workforce. This demographic that he's talking about, this seven million people that have just-- these seven million men that have just checked out of the construction industry, this is the demographic that has shaped our industry for the last several decades. These are the people that carry much of the knowledge with them that our industry relies on.

We need to get this knowledge out of these individuals and pass it along to the next generation because quite frankly, the next generation that's coming in learns great stuff in school. They learn great stuff in training programs. You know, hey, I teach a lot of online stuff on different platforms, and I think there's some great information out there for them.

However, these people that have been in our industry, these skilled trades, these superintendents, these people that have been in our industry for the last decade, two decades, three, four decades, they're the ones that have the real knowledge on how to get these structures built, and we need to get that out of them before they just leave and check out. We really do.

And so again, just tying this back to technology, you know, it's not uncommon, depending on who my audience is, to hear that group that I just talked about, right? That group of older men in the industry referred to as the old timers, the prima donnas, the people that are standing in the way. You know, again, they're one of the big hurdles to adopting technology in the industry.

And I don't disagree with that statement. I probably would not attempt to argue that it's not one of the issues that we face in adopting technology and changing our image. What I would argue with is that the way that we address that and the way that we handle that moving forward because I think if we don't handle it correctly, we might have a big problem.

So I think right now there are two current scenarios everybody's looking at, right? How will this play out? Number 1, we just push them. Adopt it or get out. And I see companies do that. I see market segments do that. Push, push, adopt, join in, or get out.

And the problem with that is what the trends are showing us is that if we do that, they are going to leave. They are going to get out, and I think that's a problem. Scenario number 2 is they dig in and we let them win. And the problem with that then is that this greatly slows the adoption of technology in the construction industry. It slows embracing women in construction. It slows fixing our image problem. It slows attracting more people and growing the pool of people who are interested in construction.

So scenario number 1, we push, they leave, and we're in a lurch because a lot of the information and skills and knowledge that we need to get these structures built goes with them. Scenario number 2, they dig in, we let them win, and we just kind of come to a grinding halt on adopting technology and we keep our prima donna image.

Both of these are losing scenarios. We need number 3. We need to find another scenario. And I think that we need to find it soon.

So you know-- and that third scenario really consists of finding a way to get the buy-in of the existing workforce. And when I say workforce, again, I'm talking about both construction management and skilled trades. Again, the people in those positions that have been doing this for decades really have knowledge that we need to capture, and I don't think that we've done a good job of that in the last 10 years or so.

And now that that segment of our workforce is looking at moving on, I think we're in crisis mode a little bit. We need to get their buy-in. We need them to understand a few things. So let's focus on the technology for a minute.

Sometimes we're a little unsure in the construction industry, as construction managers, business owners, project managers, superintendents, crew leaders, any level, we're a little unsure as to how to market that technology to our people in the field. And I think that we need to address that.

We need to-- when we talk about technology, we really need to make them aware that one of the things-- some of the things technology can do for us in the industry are things like connectivity like never before, communication improved to the point where we can really, truly collaborate like we've always needed to, but never have been able to do. We can communicate to the point where we start to reduce errors and reduce rework, which really reduces stress and helps the project get done on time and budget and without all of the battles that tend to be typical in our industry.

Technology can make some complicated tasks much easier. And there are just dozens, if not hundreds of examples here, things like laser scanning or even 360-degree photos. I mean, I can't-- I've been in this industry for a long time, and I can't-- I can't even imagine even how many photos I've taken where you stand in the room or on the side of the road because you're about to start a big street improvement job and you need to capture all the existing images. And so you're out there with your video camera or you're just taking dozens or even hundreds of images.

The ability that we have now to just walk into a room with a 360 degree camera, push a button, and capture everything in that entire room, including the ceiling and floor-- or if we really need to know where everything is, maybe we're building a hospital and there's all kinds of stuff in the walls and we kind of need some more precise positions, you know, it's quick and easy to come in and laser scan. There are just so many things that technology can do for us, and we really need to help get these points across.

So why do we need to do that? Why do we need to adopt technology? Because I think that that's a common question amongst the existing workforce. We're just fine right now. Why do I need to do all this?

They're looking at it as, you're either going to make my life more difficult, which is probably the first thing they see because they have to learn something new, and we don't like to learn new things, and we really don't like change in construction. So we've got to break that barrier.

And we also need to remember and remind the workforce that we do have a productivity problem in construction. And this could be a whole nother talk as far as productivity and construction goes because I'm not sure that everybody in the industry agrees that we have a productivity problem in construction.

But if you look at the numbers-- and again, pick any large data study that you want to look at-- we've shown little to no improvement in productivity in the construction industry in decades. We've just remained flat. And we've got to change that. We've got to start making some gains in productivity.

So again, we can spend a whole nother lecture talking about productivity and construction. But I think the fact that we haven't made any gains in productivity in construction in decades is a pretty hard fact to dispute, and we need to address that moving forward.

And this goes to-- goes towards improving our image too. There's all these conflicting news reports out there with construction's got this huge labor issue. It needs more people. This is the industry to get into. You'll be able to spend your life here because we'll never stop building. We'll never stop improving the surface of the planet to meet the needs of people. We're always going to build. This is the industry to get into.

And then the next news story is construction among all market segments is the worst out there in terms of failing to make any improvements in productivity. We've got safety issues. You know, they're the slowest industry in the world to adopt technology.

We've really-- we've got to fix these things. And to fix these things, we need the buy-in and we need the support of our current workforce. I really think that if we get their support, the result is we adopt technology at a much more rapid pace. As we do that, our industry can improve. We can take advantage of improved communication, improved collaboration, improved safety. We can use technology to help reduce rework, which benefits everything. Safety, quality, and productivity.

And as we do these things, we'll be improving our image, and we can attract more workers. And as we do that, those new workers really need to learn from those old timers before they leave the industry because again, all of this new knowledge, no matter how helpful it is, all of the new technology, all of the new ways of doing things still does not replace that knowledge that's needed on how to get the structures actually built, that dance that's done every day in the field that the superintendent choreographs between all of the trades that are out there and the way all of the trades interact with each other.

This is something we're not really going to teach in schools and training programs. This is knowledge that needs to be passed from that existing workforce to the new workforce before the existing workforce retires. I think it's really important.

OK. So how do we do that? How do we get this knowledge transferred? How do we get the existing workforce to buy in? So I think there are a couple of things we need to do. Number 1, we need to change the way that we treat people and we need to improve the respect that we show towards people in the field. These are things that we have to do to improve our image.

One of the things that I think that we have to mention, and that I would be remiss if I didn't mention as long as I'm talking about improving our image, the image of the construction workforce, we've got to acknowledge that we have one of the highest rates of suicides in all industries. And that should tell us something.

If nothing else, it's a huge deterrent to young people as they look at, well, which industry do I want to enter? Do I want to enter the industry that has the highest rates of suicide and has mental health issues? Not a lot of people are going to say yes to that prospect, right? So we do need to address some of the mental health issues and the crisis that we have in the construction industry.

And one of the ways I think that we need to do that is by changing the way that we treat people. We need to improve the respect that we show for people in the field.

You know, again, whether it's our project engineers who are running around trying to juggle lots of different tasks, our superintendents, our crew leaders who are constantly being pressed to go faster and faster without necessarily having the information they need to get the job done right. We need to recognize the impact that this is having on people's mental health, and we need to make some changes.

The 70-hour workweeks that we have in our industry, they're going to continue to drive people out, and they're going to continue to be a discouragement for people joining our industry. It's just not sustainable. And we've been doing it for a long time in construction.

I was filming a course on a project with a client of mine. We were out there for a week. And there was one day where the onsite project manager said, hey, I'm going to have-- I haven't seen my son in a year. He went off to college and he's coming back to town. But the only way I can see him is to bring him out to the job site with me, so I'm going to have him follow me around on the job site with me all day tomorrow.

And I thought, oh. My first thought was, well, that's nice. That's cool. Kind of a bring your son to work day, bring your daughter to work day. But then I kind of looked at it and went, you know, wait a minute. You really feel that much pressure and that much stress that you can't leave this job site, which was a huge job site with lots of personnel. You can't leave this job site for one day to be with your family, to be with your son or be with your daughter? That's crazy.

But I've been there. I've done that. I've been in this industry for a long time. And yes, that is the way we work. That's got to change. We've got to have more respect for people. We've got to respect the people as much as we respect the project.

So we really need to address some of these issues that put people under undue pressure and really affect their long-term mental health. I think that's one of the things we need to do.

I think another thing that contributes to the stress that we have-- that our project personnel has, the stress that our project personnel has is this lack of information, right? And again, it's well documented. Lots of other people talk about it. You know, how much time does the average project engineer, construction manager, even crew leader, how much time do they spend each week looking for information that they can't find?

And then how many times do they just move on because they can't find the right information? You know, again, it's that lack of information. It's that running around, trying to find what you're looking for.

I've got blueprints that say it's revision 3 and somebody just told me they're on revision 7. I've got to run around and find these blueprints or we're going to do it wrong. And in the meantime, my crew sits. My boss is yelling at me because I have seven people over here that aren't being productive while I run around and look for information.

This one's easy, right? We have the technology now to address that. We need to approach the adoption of this technology by talking to the existing workforce and letting them know, these are the-- we're not doing this to make you work more or make you work harder. We're doing this so that you can be more successful in your job and hopefully bring those stress levels down.

Now, I also think, though, that as we adopt new technology and introduce new technology, digital workflows, digital drawings, robotics, all of these things, as we introduce this to the existing workforce and we start to change the way we voice this to them, we start to voice this as, hey, we really are doing this as a means to make you more successful, we need to understand that also in the back of their mind, we are introducing more stress because we're giving them something that is totally foreign to them.

And in the case of many people that might have been around in the industry for a long time, this technology might be really, really foreign to them. It's just not their thing. So we need to be prepared to help them with this.

And I think we need to be subtle in the way we do that, and I'll talk about my suggestions there in a minute. But if we just hire a bunch of new people, hire a bunch of young people that come in with the attitude of, well, I know the technology and you don't, so you have to listen to me, that's just going to meet with resistance and pushback. That's a scenario that we don't want.

So really, this all starts by, I think, really taking our existing workforce, sitting down with them, voice the situation to them, talk about the changes that you need to make in your company to adopt technology and to broaden the workforce. We don't have enough people to get this work done. We just don't. We need to broaden the workforce.

And really approach this as you approach any culture shift, because that's really what this is. There needs to be a culture shift in your companies. There needs to be a culture shift in the entire industry if we're going to get this done and be successful as we move forward.

I think we need to do four things. Let's kind of pull this all together and look at the four things that I think that we need to do to get our existing workforce and our new workforce to work together so that we can adopt technology, improve our image, broaden the pool of people that we have that are interested in the construction industry. Let's take a look.

Number 1-- you know, and I've said this. I'm going to-- I'm going to reemphasize it. We need to communicate the importance of adopting technology and adopting new ideas, but we need to communicate the importance in a way that we're talking to them about why it should be important to them.

They're very used to-- right? The construction industry, people that work in the construction industry are very used to the company communicating the importance of some new change from the aspect of, this is why it's important to the company. We need to flip that. We need to talk about, why is this important to you, to the individual?

Again, explain that we're trying to incorporate technology and new ways of thinking to make their lives better. You know, again, technology can really improve communication and collaboration. And if I spend 10 hours a week looking for stuff I can't find, looking for information I can't find, looking for the revised drawings, trying to chase down an RFI that should have been answered three weeks ago, looking for a submittal that was due two months ago, if I get rid of all of that time each week that I spend doing this, I can go home 10 hours earlier.

And that is the kind of importance that we want to communicate to them. We want to communicate to them that this should be important to you because it's going to improve your life. It's going to make you more successful. It's going to reduce stress in your daily-- in your workday.

Same thing with adoption of new ways of thinking. So lean and pull planning. You know, why is this important to you? Yes, it's important to the company and we have our reasons. Why is it important to you? Well, because if we do this correctly and we pull plan instead of just screaming at you to get it done in three days because that's what the schedule says, again, we create this much more collaborative and much less stressful environment.

We also, when we're communicating the importance to them, we need to stress the importance of getting them to help, our existing workforce. Again, we need their help. If we try and implement all of these changes on our own without the help of the field, the people who have been building our structures for decades, I promise you we're going to get it wrong.

We think we know everything. We don't know everything. There's a pool of knowledge that exists in this existing workforce. There's another pool of knowledge that exists in the new workforce and some of the new and different ways of thinking. We need to merge those. One cannot live without the other.

Number 2. So number 1, stress the importance. Number 2, we need to improve training and education. And again, if there is anything good that the pandemic did to the construction industry, I've seen a huge increase in training and educational opportunities. That's really what I do for a living.

I've seen a huge uptick in construction companies that are either producing online courses, investing in online courses, getting subscription programs brought into the company that allow some on-demand, on your own kind of training and education. And I think that that's important. I think blending that on-demand, that online on-demand training with in-person training is the way that we move forward.

I want to talk about that for just a minute, you know, when I talk about online training. There's a lot of people that I talk to in the construction industry, right? Especially as we push towards educating the skilled trades and some of this existing workforce. I will tend to get pushback on online training. They're not going to go on a computer and watch a video.

Well, I'm here to tell you that they will. This is how I primarily make a living, and I've seen a huge uptick in the number of people taking online courses in the construction industry. And you know, yeah, maybe they're not going to sit down at a computer in their kitchen. Maybe they will. But everybody has a smartphone these days.

And the ability to just pull that phone out, the laptop, the computer, the iPad, whatever they have, and learn at their own pace when they're ready to learn I think is really important. Does it replace in-person training? You know, particularly when we talk about craft training or safety training, you know, no. I want them back in person so I can show them how to fit their personal fall arrest harness. I don't want them learning that only from a video.

But one of the things that I think that online, on-demand training does is it lets people learn at their own pace. It lets people learn in private. And it lets people kind of go back and rewatch if they don't understand something.

And when we talk about training and upskilling our existing workforce-- so they may not need training in their craft or how to get the building built, but they need training in technology. They need to understand digital workflows.

They need to understand digital drawings. They need to understand the difference in, what happens when I digitize my RFI workflow? How does that-- I'm not just taking the old paper form and putting it on a screen. I really want to digitize that workflow to make it improved and more accurate and faster. Those are the kinds of skills that our existing workforce needs to get.

And one of the problems that we have when we talk about upskilling that existing workforce is they-- and I've done this-- I've done this for the last 10 years. I've taught an 80-hour project manager development program where I get general-- people from general contractors, people from trade contractors, big and small. I have a room full of 50 people. All different levels in their career, all different levels of knowledge.

And when I ask about things like technology, I'll get answers that range from, oh, yeah, we have everything-- all of our processes are in Autodesk Construction Cloud and our drawings are there. That's how we do our submittals and our RFIs. We're totally digitized.

I'll get from that range all the way over to here where the answer will be, wait. You know, what do you mean that there's-- what's the cloud? What's this shared drive? You mean I can share files instead of emailing them one at a time to people?

So when we talk about upskilling our existing workforce, that's one of the challenges we're faced with is they are currently all over the place in their knowledge and their skills. And bringing a group like that into a room where you're going to talk about some new technology-- you know, how do I access drawings on my phone-- you've got people in the room that are ready to hear that and you've got people in the room that probably don't even know how to get the app that you're talking about from the App Store. Just all different skill levels.

That's where this on-demand online training can really help and come into play is it lets them sort of privately all get up to the same level so that you then can take your group in your company, be comfortable that they've all gotten at least this much knowledge, and then you can take off from there and continue to upskill them. So when I talk about improving training and education, I really do think that these online, on-demand courses play a role, and we need to acknowledge that role and look for opportunities to bring these programs into our companies. Again, whether your company is big or small, I think there's lots of opportunities out there.

Number 3, we need to encourage mentorship. We do not do this well in our industry anymore. Maybe we did it well at one time. You know, I think back to my early days in construction.

And did I have a formal mentor? No, I really didn't, but you came-- and I worked my way up in the industry through the trades. I started as a laborer and I came up from there. And you know, I did always have somebody eventually that would kind of latch on and mentor me and teach me a little bit, but I don't think it was ever really formal.

So I'm going to say that-- and now I'm going to say that this is even less common. We just don't do mentorship well in our industry, and that needs to change because that is the mechanism by which we're going to get our existing workforce to transfer knowledge to our new workforce.

So I am saying right now that we need to encourage mentorship, and we need to do that by creating formal mentorship programs. And I think this is something that all construction companies should do. I think you should do it right now. I don't think it's that difficult. And I think that you'll see some immediate-- almost immediate returns on your investment. You'll see some gains.

I do think that these mentorship programs need to be formal. We can't stand by anymore and say, well, we'll throw our interns out there. We'll throw our new apprentices out there, and somebody will pick them up and work with them. It's not happening. It's just not happening.

We need to create formal mentorship programs. We need to identify the people in our own companies who have knowledge that we don't want to lose and start pairing them up with younger people, with newer people in the industry to get them to transfer that knowledge. And when we do this, I think that we're at a point right now where this actually becomes a two-way street.

So I think that encouraging mentorship and pulling that existing person in your company and saying, hey, we want you-- we need you to be a mentor to somebody that's coming in, it elevates that person. It shows them they're appreciated. And it begins this formal connection between two people so they start transferring knowledge.

And I think in the best case-- and I think we'll see this in a lot of cases-- we won't just see a one-way transfer of knowledge. We'll see a two-way transfer of knowledge. And I think that that's really important in our industry as we do adopt technology, adopt new workflows, adopt new ways of thinking.

The younger person, the person that's new in the industry has a lot to learn from the mentor about how we get these buildings built, how we build these structures, roads, and bridges. But that person, that mentor, also has a lot that they can learn from the person that's new to the industry, the younger person that's coming in, about technology, and why do you do this? And why do you spend time with these apps? What is it-- what does it do for you? Does it really help get things done faster?

You know, I think that there's-- what we can see, what we can realize there is a real two-way transfer of knowledge. Not just the one-way transfer that we would expect to get from the mentorship, which is important. But I think that we see as much of the younger people helping the mentor as we do the other direction.

So I think we need to do that. I think that it is super important, so much so that I think this is something-- if there's a takeaway from this presentation, it's this. You need to go back and create a mentorship program in your company. I don't care how big you are. I don't care how small you are. You need to create these mentorships and start pairing people up so that they can start transferring knowledge. I think it's really, really important.

And then that brings me to number 4, which is we need to support women in construction. Again, I know that there have been huge strides in this area in-- I'll call it maybe the last decade. But hurdles continue to exist. Whether you think they do or not, I'm here to tell you they do.

We need to do a better job of supporting women in construction. Women are hugely underrepresented in the construction workforce. Again, whether it's project management personnel, project engineers, surveyors, skilled trades, women are just under-represented in our workforce. And that is a big mistake because it represents this huge pool of people that we are currently not attracting and currently not pulling from.

And given our dire numbers in terms of workforce shortages, that's just a huge mistake. We need to fix that. Again, for both management roles and skilled trades roles. If we ignore this opportunity, we will fail to fix our labor problem. Again, it's that important. In my opinion, it's that important.

I think, again, what do we do to attract more women in the construction industry I think is at least a whole nother presentation, or two or three or four. There's a lot of work that needs to be done there.

Improving respect. All the things that I talk about to improve our industry's image, as we improve the image, we will also attract more women to the workforce, to the construction workforce. But I think there are also additional things that we need to do, including recognizing some of the things that we all have done in the construction industry to discourage women from joining the industry, right?

We need to get rid of those things. We need to start recognizing that those exist and breaking those barriers down, breaking those hurdles down and getting rid of them as we improve our image so that we can, again, pull from this pool that we are not currently pulling from. We just-- we need more people of all types interested in construction as a long-term career.

As we do that, as we grow that pool, everybody can pull their little slice of the pie. Make the pie bigger and we get more slices. We'll have more people looking to be project managers, more people looking to be safety directors, more people looking to be plumbers, iron workers, electricians. We need to grow this pool, and we need to take some very deliberate and specific steps that encourage women to be part of that pool. So that's number 4, support women in construction.

Again, all of this, I think, is a culture shift, right? We need to communicate the importance of adopting technology and new ways of thinking in the industry. We need to improve training and education for our existing workforce. We need to create mentorship programs and we need to encourage and support women in construction. We need to do these four things right now.

They all probably wrap around existing initiatives or things that you might be doing in your company right now anyway, but think about some of the things that I've talked about here and really maybe look at this and address this as, this really is a culture change. Maybe it's a culture change in our company. It's certainly a culture change in our industry in general.

Again, adopt technology and new ways of thinking, that's not something we've done well in the industry. Improve training and education in our workforce, not something we've done well. Mentorship programs, they're just not there anymore, and that needs to change. Supporting women in construction, we haven't done that well either, and that needs to change.

This is a culture shift. And you need to look at it in your organization and recognize it as an actual culture shift, not just four new initiatives. These are four new initiatives that are part of a culture shift. I think that that's the way you need to look at it.

I also think that if this isn't done soon, the workforce of older individuals will continue to leave. And I really believe that if this happens, and it happens at a rapid pace, no amount of technology is going to replace their absence. They have knowledge that we need to capture, that we need passed down.

And somewhere in the last 10, 15, 20 years, we've stopped doing that. We need to shift the culture and get back to this before all these people leave. I think it's critical to the future of the workforce in our industry.

I really appreciate you watching. I hope that you've learned something. And I gave you a few takeaways here. You know, again, look at this from the mindset of a culture shift and start doing some of these things right now. There's things that I've talked about that you can do in your company right now. I would really encourage you to go do some of these things.

If you have questions, the best way to reach me is on LinkedIn. You can find my LinkedIn page at the address on your screen. There's also a QR code up there. If you scan that, you'll go right to my profile. That's the best way to interact and ask questions. Give me comments. I'd love to hear what everybody else thinks. Do it there on LinkedIn. And again, I appreciate you watching this program, and I hope to see you again in another program soon.