When we think of someone who works in construction, what are the first images that pop in our head? Are they usually male or female? Many of us might immediately picture a male since the construction industry is primarily male — with women representing just around 10% of the workforce — and this is usually what is depicted in the media as well. Does this also mean that job listings are tailored towards male candidates? We decided to do research on construction job listings to find out. 

We analyzed 600+ job listings in some of the world’s largest cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, London, Sydney, and more. We looked at a large range of job roles to identify any gender bias that may exist in construction job descriptions. We also wanted to identify if there may be a gender bias in specific roles. Are administrative roles more female-centric? Or were trade roles more male-centric? 

Here’s what we discovered. 

About Our Research

In our research, we pulled a range of job listings across locations and roles and ran each post through TotalJobs’ Gender Bias Decoder to determine whether construction listings today are more male coded or female coded. We looked at many different types of roles including: Construction Laborer, Project Manager, Foreman, Project Engineer, Construction Administrator, Construction Estimator, Electrician, Pipefitter, Carpenter, Plumber, BIM Manager/ VDC Manager, Construction Director, and Machine Operator. We also looked at listings across various large metro areas and cities: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Washington DC, Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Phoenix, London, Dublin, Sydney, and Auckland. 

What does it mean to have gendered wording in job listings and why does it matter? When creating their gender bias decoder tool, TotalJobs adapted insights from a notable research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

According to the publication, “Women were more interested in male-dominated jobs when the advertisements were unbiased, making reference to both men and women as candidates, than when the advertisements made reference only to men (Bem & Bem, 1973).” So by identifying gender biases in construction job postings, we can see whether the gap of women working in construction compared to men has to do with the wording of the job postings itself. 

You may be wondering what kind of words are considered female coded or male coded. According to research from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, women are perceived as more community- and interpersonally-oriented than men. Whereas men are more often attributed with traits associated with leadership and agency. “A job advertisement for a company in a male dominated area might, using masculine language, emphasize the company’s “dominance” of the marketplace, whereas a company in a less male-dominated area might, more neutrally, emphasize the company’s “excellence” in the market.”

The Findings

Given the fact that construction has traditionally been a male-dominated industry, our initial hypothesis was that certain jobs like trade roles would have more male-coded words. We also speculated that administrative jobs would potentially have more female coded words. But what we found surprised and encouraged us. 

We discovered many job posts feature both male and female coded words, and most job posts are actually slightly more female coded — including listings for trade roles such as journeyman and electrician, fields where women only represent about 1% of the workforce. 

Our findings indicate that the construction industry is making progress in connecting with female candidates and presenting inclusive work opportunities.. 

Steps in the Right Direction: How Construction Is Becoming More Inclusive

Our findings mirror some of the recent momentum we’ve seen companies and associations take to make the construction industry more inclusive. For instance, Laing O’Rourke has set itself the target of employing equal numbers of men and women among its 5,500 global staff by 2033. 

Another example is from construction workforce intelligence solution, Bridgit, which is making a push for more inclusive terminology. When Lora McMillan, Senior Superintendent at Ledcor, challenged Lauren Lake, COO & Co-Founder at Bridgit, and other leaders at the women-owned company to consider more inclusive alternatives to words such as “manpower” and “foreman,” it sparked a call to action that they are taking to the entire industry.

The Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) and Autodesk also recently launched the Construction Diversity Image Library to increase representation of industry diversity. The library provides media imagery of diverse talent in the construction workforce, including women, people of color, and people of varying ages.

How to Bridge the Gap

 Considering construction is still predominantly male, a gap remains between who jobs are marketed towards and who is actually filling the positions. To help understand why this is the case and what can be done to close the gap, we spoke with two industry talent experts from DPR Construction: Alison Tripp, National Talent Acquisition Leader, and Stacee Barkley, Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Leader.

“There has been focus and intentionality in the talent acquisition space to have more gender neutral and gender inclusive language. However, the language (gender coding) of job descriptions, does not address the potential perceived value proposition (or lack thereof) for women entering or staying in the construction industry,” said Barkley. 

So what steps should companies and the industry take to help bridge the gap? Tripp and Barkley say we need to address the “elephant in the room” as it pertains to jobsite culture, build awareness around bias and misogyny via training and education, and hold people accountable for cultivating and maintaining cultures of inclusion and belonging. 

“Build a better mouse-trap,” said Tripp. “In other words, enhance the value proposition of careers in the construction industry for women. Identify the barriers: pay, healthcare, childcare, eldercare, remote/flex work, etc., then mitigate if not eliminate those barriers. Give women a reason to come to this industry and stay in this industry.”

Lastly, We discussed what hiring managers should keep in mind to ensure job postings or other recruitment strategies are as gender-neutral as possible. “Unconscious bias education, hiring best-practices and cultural agility” are of chief importance. “Ensure talent acquisition has an embedded DEI strategy and practice,” said Barkley. “Diversity is insufficient if people don’t feel like they are welcomed and belong. It is not enough to attract talent, you want talent to stay. A talent acquisition and DEI strategy applies to the kaleidoscope of diversity and is not exclusive to gender.”

The reputation of construction being an “old-boys club” “must be deconstructed and reimaged through the lens of possibilities — recognizing both the business and human cases for a diverse and inclusive workforce.” 

Bias in the interview process can be mitigated by, “providing your teams with standardized interview questions and a comprehensive definition of candidate competencies so all interviewers follow the same framework when assessing and ranking candidates. Also, evaluate the diversity of your interview teams,” said Tripp. 

 There are clear efforts being made in the construction industry when it comes to diversity — but there’s still a long road ahead. With more time, effort, and action, we will begin to see more diverse groups of people working and thriving in construction in the years to come. 

We all have a role in creating a better, more inclusive construction industry. If you are looking to join the conversation and lend your voice, learn more by exploring Autodesk’s Advancing the Industry initiatives for resources, upcoming events, and more.

 

The post We Analyzed 600+ Construction Job Listings for Gender Bias: What We Found Surprised Us appeared first on Digital Builder.

After one of the most difficult years in modern history, the construction industry appears to be taking 2021 to make up for lost time. In March of 2021, the Autodesk Construction Outlook Report found that bidding activity slowly began to recover in 2020 between March and October, hitting a high for 2020 in November and then an all-time high in January, 2021.  

These insights came from aggregated and anonymized data from BuildingConnected, a preconstruction solution within Autodesk Construction Cloud. In March of 2021, economist Ed Zarinski noted that this increase in real-time bidding activity “signal(ed) the industry (was) getting back to work – and doing so quickly.”  

Our team has continued to keep a keen eye on bidding activity throughout the U.S. and Canada, and we recently looked at the number of new projects published in BuildingConnected by an owner, general contractor or specialty trade over the past year. Here’s what we found. 

Note: all numbers represent U.S. and Canadian data.

 

Projects published on BuildingConnected have grown almost 19 percent year-over-year 

According to aggregated and anonymized product data from BuildingConnected – a collection of over one million owners, general contractors, construction managers and subcontractors soliciting or submitting bids – 2021 was a year of record growth for the industry, with new projects published increasing almost 19 percent year-over-year on the platform. March of 2021 also hit a new all-time record for most projects published in a single month, followed closely by June 2021. 

This aggregated and anonymized BuildingConnected data also shows encouraging year-over-year growth from 2020, a sign that our industry is still working to “climb out of the trough,” so to speak. Year-over-year growth of projects published spiked in April of 2021, followed by May and June. 

 

Top 15 Cities for new project volume (U.S. and Canada) 

The BuildingConnected team also identified the regions of the U.S. and Canada that are seeing the highest volumes of new projects published (chart below). This chart details the top 15 cities with the highest levels of published projects over the course of 2021 so far. 

 

Texas, California show strong volumes of new projects 

In January of 2020, the AGC released data showing the impacts in construction jobs, which detailed that Texas lost over 33,000 jobs during the pandemic, followed by New York (22,000), Ohio (12,600), Massachusetts (11,300) and Florida (9,900).  

Of the top 15 cities with the highest levels of new projects published in 2021, cities in Texas (Houston, Dallas and San Antonio) accounted for almost 16 percent of all new projects published among the top 15 cities. California also had a particularly strong showing in terms of projects published, with three cities (San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego) accounting for just over 17 percent of new projects in the top 15 list. 

Our team will continue to review aggregated, anonymized real-time bidding activity throughout the rest of 2021 and into 2022, and we look forward to providing another update down the line. For more information about building, construction and design trends and technology, visit our Digital Builder blog and subscribe to our podcast, Digital Builder with host Eric Thomas. 

 

About BuildingConnected, an Autodesk Company 

All numbers for this blog post are proprietary product data from BuildingConnected, a platform that more than one million owners, general contractors, construction managers and subcontractors use to solicit and submit bids. BuildingConnected helps save time and increases collaboration while managing the bidding process with automated workflows that facilitate securing the best team for any construction project.  

With more than five million bid invites sent out every month on the platform, BuildingConnected empowers preconstruction teams to:  

• Find and choose the right builders for every project on the most up-to-date network of construction professionals  
• Quickly solicit bids with customizable templates and accurately compare those bids side-by-side 
• Easily collaborate with other estimators on the team, and follow communications and bid versions 
• Gain valuable insight into historical bid data and reports to optimize for future projects 

To learn more about how BuildingConnected can help your team, click here to visit our website.  

The post BuildingConnected Data Reveals Top 15 Cities with Most New Projects Published [Report] appeared first on Digital Builder.

Construction sites are dangerous places. Safety hazards lurk around every corner. This is evident by the high rate of occupational fatalities and injuries that occur each year in construction. Falls, electrocutions, heavy equipment rollovers, and collapsing scaffolding are just a small number of ways workers can be seriously injured or killed on a construction site.

As the speed of decision-making in our industry continues to increase, data can help us not only make faster decisions, but better decisions too. Research shows that incredible opportunities exist for those who build a strong strategy for managing their data. Plus, with a well-designed data strategy, you’ll be setting yourself up to leverage more advanced technologies further down the line.

 

Listen to the episode now

You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

 

On this podcast episode

Jay Bowman, Managing Director of Research & Analytics at FMI, and Andy Leek, Vice President – Technology & Innovation at PARIC Corporation, join the show to discuss the many benefits of having a strong data strategy in construction.

What we discuss:

• The state of construction data today 
• How to make sure you’re capturing useful data
• How a baseline of data strategy leads to more advanced technologies
• Improving data literacy in construction
• The future of data in construction

“Data strategy may seem optional today, but it’s really going to be a requirement tomorrow.” — Jay Bowman, Managing Director of Research & Analytics, FMI

 

Podcast highlights from Episode 21

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In recent years, many perceived the construction industry as being behind the curve with technology adoption. And while there once was some truth to that, it’s clear that builders are now embracing technology at an incredible pace. 

In fact, the AEC industry has done a tremendous job in closing the technology gap. JLL’s State of Construction Tech 2020 report found that in the past year, the construction industry compressed three years of technology adoption and growth into just nine months. And as Jay points out, venture capital investment “has grown ten-fold in the construction industry over the last decade.” 

“I don’t know if there’s another industry where there’s really that much innovation going on. It’s actually a pretty exciting time for us,” he remarks. 

In line with all this progress is a rise in the amount of data that we capture. Our research with FMI revealed that construction data has actually doubled in the last three years. So it’s not that we don’t have data—we do. We just need to make sure that we can trust the data and we’re able to put it to good use. 

“What it’s coming down to now is the fact that we already have the technology,” says Andy. 

“We are developing the data, and now it’s coming to a point where people need to know whether or not they can trust it. Is the cadence high enough that they can get information in a reasonable amount of time?”

This is where having a data strategy comes in. 

A good data strategy enables teams to access reliable and trustworthy data so they’re empowered to work more productively, make smarter project decisions, and improve profitability. Having a data strategy in place also puts more time back into people’s lives, so they can focus on things that matter outside their primary responsibilities—both professionally and personally.

“I would like to think we get to a point where we are focused on the human side of things, in terms of helping people do a better job, to rest easier, and make sure they can go home on time and watch their kids play baseball,” remarks Andy. 

“That way, they can truly have a life. People work to live, they don’t live to work.”

 

Four steps to building a data strategy

The conversation we had with Jay and Andy amplifies the most important takeaways from the data report we recently published, with FMI as our partner. This resource shares the findings we discovered from surveying nearly 4,000 AEC professionals on their data practices. 

The report also sheds light on the actionable steps that construction firms are strongly encouraged to take when building their own data strategy. 

Below is a quick summary of those steps, along with insights from Andy and Jay. 

Step 1: Select a single point of focus

Companies with good data strategies have one thing in common: they all began by selecting just one area to focus on. 

“In the case studies that we did, this was the common thread through everybody,” explains Jay. “No one tried to solve everything at one time, they chose one area of the organization where they could apply a solution.”

There are different ways to figure out the best point of focus. Andy recommends concentrating on places within the business where you already have measurable data.

“For us, we started in two basic areas—one was financial and the other was safety. And those were the two simplest places in our situation. We just decided to zero in on those particular areas and grow from there.”

You could also identify areas that would benefit most from data. Ask yourself, which component or department of the business would generate the most value if it had a data strategy in place?

Taking these steps narrows down the focus of your data strategy, so you can prevent being overwhelmed and get started quickly. 

Step 2: Get employee buy-in to reduce hesitancy

You can’t have a data strategy without the support and commitment of other stakeholders. That’s why before rolling out your plans, ensure that you have buy-in from the right people. 

According to Andy, the best way to do this is to “meet people where they’re at.” 

“You’ve got to get them comfortable with the terminology. When you start throwing acronyms at people, they turn off immediately,” he adds.

When educating teams about data, make sure you’re doing it in a way that they can understand. You can do this by starting with the basics to create a foundational education. 

Jay likens it to teaching someone how to drive.

“If I’m trying to teach someone to drive a car, I’m not going to tell them how an internal combustion engine works and how the metal comes together. I’m going to explain to them the gas pedal and the steering. I’m going to teach them how to use the brake.”

The same thing applies to your data strategy, he says. “We have to start at that ground level.”

You can also improve data literacy by making it easy and intuitive for teams to view and interpret data. 

Over at PARIC, Andy says they did this by creating curated dashboards for their teams. 

“We curated them based on their role or their phase in the project. That way, there are no endless bar graphs and pie graphs for them to try and noodle all the way through. They can easily see key insights relevant to them.”

Step 3: Standardize your data capture across all projects

The outputs or results of your data strategy will only be as good as the inputs entered into the system. 

According to Jay, one of the killers of data integrity is having “multiple project inputs.”

“You would not realize that there are 30 different ways to spell the name of one supplier. Sometimes you can use all capital letters and sometimes you use just the regular capital at the beginning of the sentence… Those things, although they seem minor, actually add up and can complicate your project inputs.”

Having multiple processes is another problem, says Jay. When your data capture and QA processes aren’t uniform, you are hindering your ability to collect high-quality data and prevent your teams from gaining useful insights. 

This is why standardization is so important. Before capturing and analyzing information, everyone in the organization must first agree on the formats, systems, and processes to use. 

Step 4: Keep project data in a common environment

Using disconnected software and hardware isone of the top reasons for having bad data, says Jay.

In order for your strategy to be successful, you must ensure that all your data lives in one, centralized location that can be accessed by the right people. In other words, you need a common data environment (CDE).

As Jay puts it, “Standardization and creating a common data environment stood out more than anything in terms of what firms could do to address data integrity issues and limit the amount of bad data.”

If you haven’t already, decide on a single platform on which to host and analyze your data. Adopting a CDE not only ensures that teams have access to the right information, it also guarantees that they’re all working from the same data. With a CDE, project stakeholders can remain well-informed and they have the ability to collaborate more effectively.

 

The bottom line with data strategy

A formal data strategy gives companies a competitive advantage in today’s AEC landscape. 

So, don’t wait too long to roll out a strategy in your firm. Bets are your competitors are already making progress. Start by identifying a specific area to focus on and getting buy-in from your team. From there, make sure you establish standardized data processes and adopt a CDE to keep everyone on the same page. 

 

New podcast episode every two weeks 

Digital Builder is hosted by me, Eric Thomas. New episodes of the Digital Builder podcast go live every two weeks. 

If you can’t get enough of construction tech and data strategies, catch the full podcast episode of Digital Builder to hear more from Andy and Jay.

Listen to the Digital Builder Podcast on: 

• Apple Podcasts 
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• Google Podcasts
• or wherever you listen to podcasts

The post Digital Builder Ep 21: Bringing a Construction Data Strategy to Life appeared first on Digital Builder.

Volume house builder Weston Homes has bought part of a former textiles dyeing factory complex in south east London for a £100m multi-storey flats scheme.

The 4.6 acre Dylon factory site will be transformed with a 254 apartments scheme with, undercroft basement parking, and children’s play space  within landscaped gardens.

The site already benefits from full planning consent, granted last Spring, allowing construction to start in late 2022 with a 20 month build programme.

It forms the second phase of the redevelopment of the Dylon works following on from 223 built to Crest Nicholson undertaken in 2017.

The contemporary buildings are designed for first time buyers and will have full height windows, balconies and tiered roofscapes complete with feature London Yellow Stock brickwork, providing a connection to nearby residential buildings.

Bob Weston, Chairman and Manging Director at Weston Homes said: “This new outer London development is part of our ongoing major growth and expansion. The business has a highly diverse range of developments, including a series of major landmark schemes commencing and many others in the pipeline.”

Over the last five years, Weston Homes has purchased land sites for over £2 bn worth of residential and mixed use development across outer London and the South East.

This includes 20 current active sites and over 7,500 new homes in the pipeline including traditional housing and large scale urban regeneration projects.

 

 

Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.clarkeconstructioncreations.com/?p=1128

HS2 is sliming down the planned Euston station terminus in a bid to save cost and programme time.

The station will now move to a simpler 10 platform design from the originally planned 11 platforms.

This will allow the station main contractor joint venture Mace Dragados to build the £2.6bn project in a single stage, rather than two stages as originally envisaged.

The changes are far less dramatic than some in the industry feared after a 15-month review seeking cost-saving options and efficiency opportunities, depending in part on the scope of the northern route of HS2, particularly the future of the eastern leg.

HS2 minister Andrew Stephenson revealed the new plan in a six-month update to Parliament yesterday.

He said that the changes will ease the £400m budget pressure already identified on Euston station budget.

Stephenson said the exact savings would be identified as the updated design is developed over the coming months.

“In response to a recommendation from the Oakervee Review about looking into the efficiency of the Euston station, the move to a smaller, simpler 10-platform station design at Euston has now been confirmed,” he said in the report

“This will provide a more efficient design and delivery strategy and play a significant role in mitigating the affordability pressures recently identified.

“Moving to this revised HS2 Euston station design maintains the station infrastructure capacity to run 17 trains per hour, as set out in the Phase One full business case.”

Stephenson also highlighted potential minor delays in the southern section of the line leading into Old Oak Common from outer London.

He said contractors were now focused on identifying efficiencies and controlling risk in these key areas.

The added delivery risk stems from residual delays in completing enabling works and handover to main works in certain locations.

Slower than planned design progress and securing planning consents by the main works civils contractors had also limited productivity of the supply chain.

HS2 is currently reporting future potential cost pressures of around £1.3bn compared to £0.8 billion six months ago.

The overall budget for Phase One, including Euston, remains £44.6bn. This is composed of the target cost of £40.3bn and additional government-retained contingency of £4.3bn.

Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.clarkeconstructioncreations.com/?p=1113