Labor

This year’s spring construction season could see a change in how firms hire new workers.

Despite January data implying the demand for construction jobs was slowing, the number of open positions for which contractors were hiring grew again in February, according to a report from Associated Builders and Contractors.

So, contrary to how things looked earlier this year, construction’s labor shortage remains elevated.

These renewed hiring numbers are an optimistic sign as the industry faces high interest rates, recession fears and “slow implementation of America’s infrastructure rebuilding program,” said Anirban Basu, ABC’s chief economist. 

Nevertheless, there simply aren’t enough people available to fill those jobs. In fact, a large number of firms opt to not bid on some projects, as they do not have the staffing to deliver the work, according to the Associated General Contractors of America.

Contractors on the ground are seeing the same thing, and say that the industry has a healthy amount of projects, but little staff to deliver them.

“In North Texas we are extremely busy,” said Keyan Zandy, CEO of the Skiles Group, a Richardson, Texas-based contractor primarily specializing in healthcare projects. 

Zandy said the shortage of experienced labor is obvious, as tradesworkers with five or more years on the job are increasingly rare. As construction’s most experienced field workers retire, there’s a lack of new blood stepping in to fill those spots.

“Our nation’s builders, they have a strong project pipeline, they need a strong talent pipeline,” said Fraser Patterson, founder and CEO of Skillit, a construction recruiting platform. 

Economists and construction execs say that resolving that issue requires a massive shift in the way the industry finds, recruits and retains talent.

A potential return to self-perform

“There’s a huge amount of the craft workforce knowing its worth and expecting benefits commensurate,” Patterson said. Skillit — which counts Brasfield & Gorrie, Haskell and JE Dunn among its clientele — has begun to see a shift toward workers who desire full-time, “W-2” positions, as opposed to seasonal or project-based work, he said.

“Ultimately the labor shortage means you either continue to rely on subcontracting … or take control of your own destiny,” Patterson told Construction Dive. Hiring more full-time tradesworkers is something Patterson said he sees major players doing in the near future.

Zandy said he has seen some of that practice in the North Texas region, with major GCs trying to self-perform more concrete work or other similar site preparation work, to enhance their margin, lower their bid price and win more projects. 

“GC’s used to do everything, but over the years we’ve become construction managers,” Zandy said, a sentiment Patterson echoed.

But tradewsorkers increasingly know their worth, and have begun to have a bad taste left in their mouth by hiring practices like seasonal furloughs, which leave them with lack of job security, Zandy said.

Wages aren’t the biggest sticking point right now and job hunters want a career that will help support them in the long term, according to Garrett Johnson, director of regional talent for Suffolk Construction’s Northeast region.

Johnson said workers seek a company that can help them upskill and find a clear career path and future.

“A lot of it has to do with training opportunities, that’s a big one,” Johnson said. “A lot of cases they’re looking for you to provide a career path or career ladder.”

Meanwhile, Zandy, who is a proponent of lean building practices, said a major aspect of lean and successful recruiting is respect. Firms instill a sense of respect and belonging when they improve tradesworker amenities like dining areas and ensure restrooms are clean and separate from the workplace, he said.

Continuing to fill the gap

On a recent visit to his son’s school for career day, Zandy said he asked the fourth graders what they wanted to be when they grew up. Everyone had the same response: a YouTuber. 

“So I share that story with people in our industry, because I try to explain like, we’re not just competing against each other as general contractors, or trade contractors for talent, we’re competing against every other profession,” he said.

Is it time to ring the alarm bells about the labor shortage? Johnson says yes.

“We definitely are moving to a point where this is becoming critical,” he said, adding he meets with Suffolk’s leadership team to regularly discuss the labor gap. “It’s been sort of at its boiling point for a while.”

Although it may be a time to change how employers hire and retain workers, there are still factors playing to the industry’s advantage, such as the high wages that construction offers — some positions like ironworkers, electricians and plumbers can earn a median salary of $27 per hour, or $57,000 a year.

The pandemic spurred companies to hire remote workers, and in some cases that led to jobs to move overseas. Patterson said the good news is that could lead to a “blue collar resurgence,” as most construction jobs must be done in person.

At the same time, a potential recession could provide some contractors with an opportunity, Zandy said.

Particularly on healthcare projects, major parts and materials like generators have 60-week lead times, which means projects simply cannot begin on time, he said. As reports like the Dodge Momentum Index continue to track economic headwinds, projects could halt or be canceled. That could bring those lead times down and help contractors deliver projects faster.

Still, the demand for labor could dip, which builders could take advantage of — potentially as a time to evolve their hiring practices. 

“The firms that provide more value than what it costs to use them always seem to prevail,” Zandy said. 

A Salisbury, Maryland-based general contractor is taking a different approach to its recruitment literature. 

To better inform young people about a career in the trades, Chris Eccleston, founder and CEO of Delmarva Veteran Builders, and Jenny Kerr Schroen, the firm’s creative developer and graphic designer, have written and are publishing a children’s adventure book.

“Grit Leads to Greatness” uses the same title as Delmarva Veteran Builders’ tagline, one Eccleston and Schroen say captures the way the company approaches its work. Seeing the large labor gap the industry continues to face while the GC’s subcontractor base started to diminish spurred Eccleston to act, he said.

“We decided we need to do something about this to engage people, get them interested in the construction trades where we are,” he told Construction Dive.

The story

Geared toward kids aged 6 to 12 years old, “Grit Leads to Greatness” tells the story of Trig and Teigan, siblings who live in a decaying city that has forgotten how to build, as its citizens are hypnotized by glowing stones they carry. 

Over the course of about 40 pages, the siblings go on an adventure, encountering an ogre mason, a snow gnome (or snome) carpenter, an amphibious plumber and “the electrician magician.” 

Penned by Eccleston and Schroen with illustrations by Justin Donaldson and Rachel Danae, the book seeks to get kids from 2nd to 5th grade excited about various jobs in the construction trades.

Schroen said she took inspiration from projects from her childhood.

“When I was 10 years old, there was a whole push to teach about saving the planet … so they actually used cartoons to convey the message and to show kids that they actually could save the world,” she said. “There were cartoons called ‘Captain Planet’ and movies like ‘FernGully’ that worked really trying to shape the way kids solve the planet, and I personally was moved by that. And I actually took that idea about how I felt as a 10-year-old and applied it to this.”

Thus far, the book has been read in front of about 2,000 elementary school kids, and Eccleston and Schroen are pleased with the reception and feedback from teachers and parents, they said.

In addition to the reading events, they hired live action characters and a costume company to make what Eccleston called “movie-quality costumes” for actors to wear and interact with kids.

The book is available for pre-order, and will go on sale in June. Schroen and Eccleston used a hybrid self-publishing model, partnering with Mascot Books in Herndon, Virginia.

The message

“I think the industry has an image problem, and it’s not with kids; kids love construction,” Eccleston said. 

He, like many, has seen decades of educational institutions pushing students toward college or other higher education, while construction has become “second class” or “an alternative route,” he said.

An important aspect to the effort, Schroen said, isn’t trying to make each kid suddenly pursue construction as their dream job, but rather ensure it doesn’t become merely a backup option.

“We’re not just trying to create new construction workers, we’re trying to make advocates for the industry,” she said.

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The Q3 2019 United States Gypsum (USG) + U.S. Chamber of Commerce Commercial Construction Index (CCI), released last month, expressed widespread concern among contractors about their ability to hire enough skilled labor to properly staff projects in the face of growing demand. 

According to the index, sixty-one percent of respondents experience a high level of difficulty finding skilled workers, marking an increase over the first two quarters of 2019. Specialty trade contractors are the hardest hit, with sixty-nine percent reporting a high level of difficulty in sourcing skilled labor. At the same time, contractors expressed high levels of confidence overall, with fifty-eight percent highly confident that the next year will offer sufficient business opportunities.

Confidence in the industry’s financial conditions was similarly high. Seventy-six percent of contractors expect access to working capital financing to remain the same or expand, and seventy-four percent expect owner access to financing to remain stable or improve in the next six months.

When Confidence Is a Bad Sign

It isn’t hard to see where this is going. The combination of increased demand for construction services and easy access to financing is likely to exacerbate the labor shortage as more projects are won than contractors are able to staff. This is likely to drive up labor costs, already an area of moderate or high concern to eighty-nine percent of contractors. In addition to driving up costs, the shortage of skilled labor is also likely to cause delays in project completion.

These converging trends highlight the need for contractors to explore options other than engaging in endless bidding wars or trying to clone electricians. By finding ways to work more efficiently, projects can be completed on schedule with fewer personnel. 

Collaboration Is Key

Improving project planning through enhanced collaboration is one of the most effective methods of increasing operational efficiency and minimizing waste within the construction industry. Fine-tuning planning processes, particularly with the help of digital tools, has helped many contractors compensate for unfavorable market conditions. 

One increasingly popular approach is pull planning, so called because the work is “pulled” from the various teams involved and planned backwards. Pull planning is integral to increasing efficiency because by planning backwards and involving all the teams, the phase schedules created are based on a team’s best thinking and make optimal use of time and materials by thoughtfully sequencing work. When this strategy is implemented properly, pulled plans are transformed into detailed lookahead plans that accurately reflect how tasks will be done week over week. The result—workflow is more predictable and trades arrive at sites that are ready for them because the team ahead of them completed their work on time. 

Analog pull/lookahead planning is conducted in meetings in which teams mark tasks out using sticky notes on a whiteboard or a wall. The problem with this approach is that it requires considerable time and effort to implement and uphold, particularly on complex projects with many teams involved. Because of the complexity of the resulting plans, doing any kind of analysis to learn from and improve the plan requires that the results be loaded in a computer. Any effort put forward by a few individuals to enter the data in on behalf of the rest of the team not only duplicates effort, but also disconnects the participants from their plan. This disconnect can lead to misunderstandings and miscommunication later on. 

Benefits of Digital Planning

To address the shortcomings of analog planning, many contractors are turning to digital tools for more collaborative project scheduling. Use of a digital tool not only facilitates better planning conversations, but also captures huge amounts of data. This enhanced visibility enables them to give projects (and people) the right kind of attention based on what they’re doing well (or where they need improvement). Other benefits of digital planning include:

• Enabling everyone involved in the project to collaborate on the schedule in real time, and update it when needed so that the plan is always kept current. 

• Facilitating live reporting to executive leadership for greater visibility.

• Eliminating wasted time from meetings so that teams can spend their time planning, learning and improving rather than maintaining the plan and debating who said what, when.

• Capturing otherwise untapped data that can help forecast outcomes and enhance cross-project learning.

• Optimizing schedules to ensure that work is done in the most efficient way possible. 

• Scheduling smarter to save money that might have been wasted on delays and rework, so that contractors can maximize the productivity of their workforce by knowing exactly when to bring them on the job site. 

While digital planning can’t solve the labor shortage, it enables contractors to do more with the labor they have, and save money to hire the labor they need.

Want more insights like this? Check out this free eBook about how technology can enable your teams to run better projects.

There’s an old saying in construction about there being only two types of contractors: those who have been sued, and those who will be.

While that maxim may be tongue-in-cheek, it received validation recently in a report from business credit scoring agency Creditsafe. The firm found that the construction industry had the third-highest number and cost of legal filings among all U.S. business sectors.

Indeed, construction businesses had 212,582 legal filings entered against them last year, resulting in cumulative losses exceeding $3.36 billion, according to Creditsafe’s State of Credit Risk 2022 report released in February.

For construction attorneys who deal with these disputes, the findings were hardly surprising. They said the numbers merely reflect the fragmented nature of the business.

“On some of these projects, you’ll have 30 or 40 parties involved,” said Elizabeth Coppolecchia, a partner with Miami-based Weiss Serota Helfman Cole + Bierman, who specializes in construction claims. “Anytime you have that many players, when there are disputes, it’s inevitable that you will have a large number of claims.”

That multifaceted structure sets itself apart from business arrangements in other industries, lawyers said, where deals often get done one on one.

“A construction project is not your typically two-party transaction with one contract and one set of rules,” said Philip Mannelly, an attorney in the construction practices group at McDonald Carano in Reno, Nevada. “With so many different interests, there’s just a lot of opportunities for things to go sideways.”

Banking jitters

In the current economic environment, those opportunities have multiplied, attorneys said, as access to capital has tightened and banking jitters have spurred lenders to apply more scrutiny to projects.

“Sometimes, there are provisions that things like change order approvals have to go through the lender itself,” Mannelly said. “So even if the owner and the general contractor agree, if the lender says no, that creates a dispute.”

The cascading provisions that are embedded in many contracts, where the rules that apply to a relationship higher up in the project chain must be adopted by those lower down, can also lead to more disputes when one party doesn’t fulfill its obligations.

“If one person sues at the ownership level, then every trade contractor has to sue their subs and suppliers to protect themselves, so it becomes a mess,” said Andrew Richards, a co-managing partner and co-chair of the construction practice at Kaufman Dolowich Voluck in Woodbury, New York. “It’s the domino effect, and it all runs downhill.” 

Richards points to the gargantuan litigation that’s playing out currently in New York City surrounding 432 Park Avenue, the supertall condominium tower on Billionaire’s Row that has been beset with lawsuits. Owners have sued the developer, claiming more than 1,500 building defects.

“That litigation is a monster,” Richards said. “You’ve got all these wealthy people suing the sponsor who built it, and then the sponsor is suing Lendlease, who was the construction manager. We’ve had to keep a running counsel list just to keep all the parties straight.”

Why does it cost so much?

The same multipliers that lead to a high number of claims also contribute to outsized monetary damages, lawyers said. Larger and more complex projects, paired with increased costs for materials and labor, have upped the dollar amounts that are at stake.

“The price of land has risen, too,” said Richards. “And as construction gets more complicated via the engineering process, buildings are getting bigger. That’s why you have bigger claims. It’s just that simple.”

Another factor has been the spiraling amount of electronic discovery that claims generate as more and more of the construction process is captured digitally.

“One of the biggest reasons, I think, is the advent of technology,” Coppolecchia said. “Even a project that’s not huge could generate multiple terabytes of data in discovery. You’re talking about the cost of collection, and the cost of paying attorneys to find the needle in the haystack.”

How to avoid claims

With both the numbers and dollar amounts of construction claims at dizzying heights, lawyers say the best thing to do is to try to avoid claims in the first place, while writing language into contracts to keep their costs down when they do happen.

As with nearly all aspects of construction, doing so starts with the fine print. While form contracts can be a good starting point, attorneys say provisions for a project’s unique aspects should also be considered, even if those modifications cost more to write up.

“I always tell my clients, spend your money up front,” Coppolecchia said. “You see it all the time where it’s a project that’s worth $60 million, but owners, developers and contractors will just take a form contract, change the names and hope everything will go well. It’s shocking.”

Instead, put in the time and money to make sure the issues of the day, as well as the current project, are reflected in those governing documents. For example, Coppolecchia said that many boilerplate agreements still haven’t taken rising material costs into account.

“A lot of times, nobody considers that’s not really covered in the form docs,” Coppolecchia said. “That’s something you have to add in to protect yourself from industrywide price increases.”

Contractors can also try to limit the types of claims that are permitted under certain scenarios.

“You can use clauses that preclude someone from making a claim based on certain scenarios, such as delay claims,” Richards said. “If you're a GC, you put in your subcontracts that if the owner has a change or causes a delay, that you’re not liable to your subs unless you recover from the owner. That makes sure the GC doesn’t get caught in the middle.”

Keeping claim costs down

If claims do arise, attorneys say contract language can help keep the price tag down as well. For example, Coppolecchia likes to include provisions for at least two rounds of mediation before a dispute can be taken to court.

“You want to include alternative methods you can use to work through issues with the other party,” Coppolecchia said. “If you can work things out informally, you’ll save quite a bit of money.”

Another strategy is to introduce a clause for liquidated damages — which are paid when a party doesn’t fulfill its side of the agreement — using an amount that’s predetermined before any disputes arise. For example, the owner of a restaurant project may estimate that any delay in opening would cost $1,000 per day, based on lost revenues.

If that gets put in the contract and a delay happens, it helps expedite enforcement, because no expert needs to be brought in at that point to determine what damages should be. But it also puts the contractor on notice for any potential costs.

“It provides a reasonable recovery for the owner if the contractor is legitimately delayed, and it also lets the contractor know what its risk and potential exposure is,” said Mannelly. “That ultimately could lead to a more efficient resolution and negotiation to close out the project.”

While putting specific dollar amounts on items upfront can make negotiations tense, it avoids even more fraught discussions later. “People can be averse to putting a number on it,” said Mannelly. “But on the other hand, you know your risk going in.”

That approach could be a middle ground to waiving damage rights completely, which ironically could result in a higher cost when a dispute arises.

“A lot of times what we see is both parties will agree to a waiver, which is standard in many form contracts,” Coppolecchia said. “But if you’re going through this and you end up in litigation, you really shouldn’t waive those damages. Because a lot of times, that’s where you’ll really end up losing money.”

 

UPDATE: MAY 11, 2023: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law Wednesday an immigration reform bill that will require private employers to use the federal E-Verify system to confirm workers’ immigration status. The law goes into effect July 1.

In anticipation of the new requirement, which supporters say will protect jobs and strengthen national security, some employees have stopped showing up to work at businesses throughout the state, CBS Miami reported Wednesday. 

Out of fear of deportation, workers in industries like construction and agriculture have already packed up with plans to move to other states with less strict immigration laws, according to CBS Miami.

Dive Brief:

• A Florida bill designed to halt the flow of illegal immigration via citizenship workplace verification is expected to be signed soon by Gov. Ron DeSantis after passing the Florida House last week. Senate Bill 1718 requires private employers with 25 or more employees to use the federal E-Verify system when hiring workers to ensure their ability to legally work in the U.S.
• Under the legislation, many workers who were previously compliant with documentation standards will now face termination and employers that do not comply will face fines of $1,000 day until they comply. 
• The measure, which would go into effect July 1 if signed by DeSantis, also permits random audits of employers suspected of hiring unauthorized immigrant workers. 

Dive Insight:

Several other states already require E-Verify for private employers, including North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Arizona, Alabama and Utah. The federal platform was initially created for verifying public employees’ immigration status.

Under the current system in Florida, public contracts require that each worker has an E-Verify certificate, and subcontractors on those projects must provide the general contractor with a sworn statement confirming they don’t use unauthorized immigrant labor. 

Private businesses in Florida can use E-Verify or I-9 documentation for their employees, but DeSantis has argued the latter makes enforcement challenging. That means the new law could greatly impact industries that currently rely on the I-9 system, according to Trent Cotney, partner and construction team leader for Tampa, Florida-based Adams and Reese LLP. 

For many firms, it could also mean a new way of doing business in order to circumvent the 25-worker threshold, he said.

“I anticipate this law will result in further segmentation of the industry with smaller subcontractor labor groups falling under the 25-employee limit to avoid compliance with E-Verify,” said Cotney.

With this new legislation, Florida businesses must be vigilant in their hiring practices and ensure they are following the E-Verify requirements if they have 25 or more employees, said Cotney. 

“Construction, in particular, faces a shortfall of workers as evidenced by the dramatic rise in the use of sub-labor,” he said.

Julia Maskivker, professor of political science at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, predicted the bill would have a negative economic impact on most businesses in the state.

“This legislation will likely have a detrimental effect on the economy here in [Florida], because it will make freedom of contract and freedom to labor harder to actually exercise — and this may have negative effects on consumer prices and on inflation consequently,” Maskivker told Construction Dive. 

Widening the labor gap

Cotney called construction’s skilled labor gap the industry’s “biggest problem for more than a decade,” saying many employers have relied on immigrant workers under the current system. 

DeSantis and others in Florida have championed E-Verify as a method of protecting jobs and increasing national security.

But Maskivker said the current state of immigration affairs is a “mess,” both on the federal and state level, and E-Verify isn’t a good solution. In addition, an aspect of the new legislation criminalizes the movement of unauthorized immigrants, meaning someone with undocumented immigrant parents who takes them to the hospital could be charged with a felony.

As laws get stricter, immigrant workers who benefit the economy through work and taxes will stop doing so, she said. 

“What happens when laws get stricter about undocumented labor is that many of these workers may cease to pay taxes … prompted by fear of deportation,” Maskivker said. “Everybody loses when this happens, not just employers and not just workers.”

Dive Brief:

• The number of open jobs in construction dropped by 73,000 to 341,000 in March, the second lowest since mid-2021, according to an Associated Builders and Contractors’ analysis of new Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The openings represent jobs for which employers are actively recruiting.
• That constituted a 17% drop compared to March 2022. The number of open jobs has been on a rollercoaster ride this year — half of the open positions vanished in January, then a large number returned in February before the dip last month.
• The data indicates “a significant decline in open positions in the construction industry,” said Anirban Basu, ABC’s chief economist. “The 3.7% of construction workers who were laid off or discharged in March is the highest rate since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Dive Insight:

Weakness in the single-family homebuilding sector likely accounted for much of the decrease in job openings, Basu said. 

Meanwhile, the fact that only about 10% of ABC’s mostly nonresidential members expect staffing levels to decrease over the next six months indicates a positive outlook in the sector for nonhousing-related construction.

“With interest rates elevated and set to rise again at the Federal Reserve’s May meeting, these dynamics should remain firmly in place over the next few months,” Basu said.

At the same time, nonresidential construction spending continues to increase, though that is largely anchored by the manufacturing sector.

A boom in manufacturing projects, spurred by the pivot to onshoring during the pandemic, is benefiting construction and cushioning the blow from other softening markets, according to Stephen Sandherr, CEO of Associated General Contractors of America.

Women comprise only about 14% of registered apprentices, according to the Department of Labor, although they account for half of the workforce.

The department is taking steps to increase that number. Last week it announced $5 million in grants to help up to 14 community-based organizations to attract and support women in registered apprenticeship programs, largely in construction, manufacturing and cybersecurity.

In past grant cycles, the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations grants have been around $250,000 to $1 million, funding about five grants a year, said Wendy Chun-Hoon, director of the Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau.

Here, Chun-Hoon talks with Construction Dive about the grants, the state of construction labor and how underrepresented groups can help alleviate the industry’s labor woes.

CONSTRUCTION DIVE: Can you tell me a little bit about this grant program? 

Wendy Chun-Hoon: We announced the fiscal year 2023 funding opportunity last Friday in New York City, which was pretty exciting because we did it at a current WANTO grantee. Their name is Nontraditional Employment for Women, and they were graduating a class of pre-apprentices. 

The authorizing legislation for WANTO actually goes back some 30 years, and we have had grantmaking authority here at the Women's Bureau for the past six years or so. The entire program is designed as a technical assistance grant to community-based organizations like NEW, which is providing technical assistance to employers, to unions and then increasingly to public sector project owners on how to recruit, how to train, how to retain — which often involves a lot of support in mentoring women in the many occupations that they're still vastly underrepresented in.

What are the biggest challenges for getting women into the trades?

One of the graduates from Friday, her name's Alicia, said she had always liked doing electrical rewiring. She got in trouble with her dad when she was a kid for rewiring their TV when it stopped working. I think this is a very common story. She got discouraged from pursuing that path to the electrical trades.

So she grows up in Jamaica, comes over to the States and finds the only options open to her were in home care. And as she is fixing the kids' toys, it's the mom who notices and says, "Hey, you look like you're always fixing these things, have you ever heard of this program NEW?" And lo and behold, eight weeks later she's through her preapprenticeship program.

I think the very common story is, you’ve got to see it to be it, and there aren't enough women in these jobs. So, a big part of the first step is to make sure that women know that these jobs are available to them, and here's the pathway to get into them.

We've heard other stories about similar barriers to entry. One common barrier is childcare. A lot of these women have talked about how hard it is to make that pivot to a career while they have young kids to care for. So, I should specifically mention that up to 25% of the WANTO grant to the community-based organization is funding or investing in supportive services. Those supportive services can address all the barriers to entry: tools and equipment, last mile transportation, access to training programs and access to childcare. 

How does WANTO measure the success of a grant program like this?

I will start by acknowledging that WANTO is small. It's a small footprint. Maybe you can tell my excitement through this conversation about how much power I think it has and how much bigger I think it should be. But it's a pretty small footprint. 

The amount that Congress authorized in the omnibus last year is only $5 million. When we're thinking about the grant dollars across the federal government, I believe that we are one of the more effective programs. We have reached 10,000 women over the past six grant cycles to be part of or join pre-apprenticeship programs, apprenticeship programs, get safety training, get trade classes, career counseling, et cetera. But we've reached — back to my earlier about “See it to be it” — we've reached three times that — something like 30,000 women. 

For example, the new grantee that we were with on Friday said they put up a metro poster and instantly got 500 people calling to join their classes. Very simple things like that have an impact, so the reach is important. 

I think 97% of the women who come through WANTO-funded interventions are gaining that certificate or that industry license or some kind of credential. That's pretty significant, including for a small grant program like this, that is designed to be technical assistance, not even direct service. 

If I’m a stakeholder in construction, what should I take away from WANTO’s grant program?

These jobs are growing. We don't currently have the workforce to meet the demand. Engaging a skilled, diverse, inclusive workforce — that will be the future of the trades. The more that we can get these lessons, these strategies that have proven to work and the quicker we can replicate them, the more we can meet that workforce demand that every contractor is facing. 

This is really the moment, right? Because the money is starting to hit the street in states, the projects are starting to get bid on, the partnerships starting to align. So, for the contractors, for the unions, for the public sector partners who will be absorbing these dollars, to really look for those partners similar to the WANTO grantees to help them quickly embed those lessons and those effective practices, the quicker we'll get there in terms of meeting the workforce demand.