Builder magazine’s editorial director, John McManus, offers an important perspective on the building industry’s labor challenge. His analysis peers through the lens of enterprise builders holding up the lion’s share of homebuilding in this country. At its essence, homebuilding is industry more than art, and to building in volume requires a clear-sighted business perspective. Hence, McManus drills down to a discussion of KPI’s – Key Performance Indicators, the measurable values that demonstrate how effectively a company is achieving its defined business objectives.
It’s worth easing into his discussion of what makes a carpenter in this country, from a dollars and cents perspective. But here’s a taste of where he’s headed, and it deserves consideration and discussion from everyone concerned about where the next generation of carpenters is coming from.
One change would be to look more and manage more to KPI’s of value-created per skilled-worker hour, and less at dollars paid per worker hour. This is not an original thought; and it has been the way some builders have begun to make productivity gains in their construction start-to-completion workstreams. There’s lots of attention now to whether companies actually use some of their tax-cut windfall to hire and upgrade and invest in employees or not. Benchmarks around dollars for value-creation vs. dollars-per-hour need to become an industry standard. The value a well-paid carpenter can produce should result in a favorable ratio of money, time, quality, and value, the result being greater productivity overall.