Dublin was the venue for the first in a series of breakfast briefings being held by GoContractor throughout November. The briefing, which took place on November 7th, featured Don Ward of Constructing Excellence as the main speaker, who presented on ‘The Future of the Hard-Hat Industries’. There was also a panel featuring representatives from GoContractor customer ESB, who discussed the reasons behind the energy company’s decision to use GoContractor for their orientations , as well as the challenges they faced implementing the system.
GoContractor CEO Sean Fennell chaired the event, held at Ely Bar and Brasserie, and after some pre-breakfast networking, introduced Don Ward who kicked off the event. Ward, Chief Executive of Constructing Excellence, the UK industry best practice and knowledge transfer organisation, part of the BRE Trust group of companies, gave the attendees his insight into what the hard-hat industry will look like in the future.
There was a major focus on what digital technology can do for businesses, and how its use can be leveraged to attract a younger workforce into the construction industry. “Would you recommend this industry to your kids?”, Ward asked the audience, before responding that he “Would, but it would not be the traditional industry”. He identified today’s young people as being the ‘minecraft generation’, who have an interest in digital design and have the capacity to be excited by the capabilities of technologies used in construction, like smart technology and Building Information Modelling (BIM).
However, Ward said the industry needs to do a better job selling itself and its technology, as well as understanding the issues that matter to millennials. “The younger generation is focused on societal and environmental issues. What industry can do more to impact quality of life than construction?”, asked Ward. He went on to emphasise that the industry is ideally placed to capitalise on the interests of young people but that the companies must do more. Ward warned that a few firms making efforts is not enough and that the shortage in labour demands a ‘single sector approach that acts like a harmonious choir’.
Perhaps the point most emphatically made in the presentation was the importance of offsite construction, which Ward called ‘The future of the construction industry’. Ward is an unapologetic evangelist for offsite construction and see’s it as part of the solution to the current system of procurement which he perceives to be broken. He criticised the present procurement process where lowest price is the biggest determining factor and long-term value is not as important. “If you select on lowest price you don’t get the kind of house suitable for an ageing population, the kind of hospitals we need, the schools, roads and infrastructure. Governments are now recognizing the value of construction. You need decent transport facilities for the economy to grow,” said Ward.
According to Ward, offsite construction is one way construction will be able to deliver high value projects in the long-term. Integrating design more into the construction is vital and companies need to learn that cutting the design budget has huge negative knock on effects to the ultimate value of a project. “The goal is digitally enabled off site construction, the challenge is getting young people involved and excited about it,” said Ward. The presentation provided much food for thought for those in attendance, going well with the breakfast provided by Ely Brasserie.
The briefing also included a panel discussion with representatives from GoContractor customer ESB: Liam Mannion, safety manager; and Padraig Dooley, project manager. As Ireland’s largest energy company, and one of the state’s biggest employers, ensuring the entire workforce is properly trained is a huge challenge. “It’s a high pressure environment. Workers are dealing with high pressure gas, chemicals and obviously electricity,” said Mannion. For ESB, their orientation priorities are the dual aims of ‘quality and competence’ and any onboarding system must allow them to accomplish those goals.
ESB decided to change their orientations system for a couple of reasons. Although, they were satisfied overall with their safety record, there were a couple of holes that impacted their goals, that they wanted to plug. “We were not properly monitoring contractor’s skills and we had a couple of quality incidents,” said Dooley. There were also external factors influencing the decision. “Insurance companies wanted to see evidence about how we managed contractors. External accreditation people were looking at how thoroughly we were looking at contractors and there is also a lot of legislation that we have to comply with,” Dooley continued. Better onboarding can reduce insurance premiums and using the GoContractor system, ESB are now able to screen contractors, ensuring they have the proper skill level.
The discussion moved on to the challenges that come with implementing a new onboarding system. The ESB has an older workforce so, “getting everyone engaged and on the same page” was the biggest challenge, according to Mannion. “We engaged with key stakeholders – workers, administrators – to see what they wanted to get out of the system. We worked with GoContractor to improve the system and the staff were happy with what we did,” said Mannion. A big focus was on making the orientations as simple as possible for the end user. ESB orientations include a huge amount of technical information so this was a challenging task.
However, the benefits are already apparent. GoContractor is a cloud-based platform and as a result, affords ESB much more flexibility and efficiency in how they carry out their orientations. “General stuff is now done on an online platform, while stuff, local to the plant, is done in person. What used to be an hour orientation is now 15 minutes,” said Mannion. Both kinds of orientations are able to be recorded on the GoContractor platform, ensuring that no worker slips through the cracks. As ESB has found, implementing an online orientations system can be challenging at first, but saves time and money, without compromising on safety.
Click here to watch Dublin Breakfast Briefing, with ESB safety specialist Liam Mannion specialist, and project manager Padraig Dooley.
