The following article was authored by Chuck Gremillion, Executive Director of the Construction Career Collaborative.
There have been occasions during my tenure as C3’s executive director where I have felt as if we were trying to change the world, and in many ways we are – the world of construction. And as most readers of this blog would probably agree, change in the construction industry does not happen quickly, and maybe it shouldn’t. But the Construction Career Collaborative (C3) is making headway, and I am writing today to illustrate that point in numbers.
As of this writing, C3 has grown its Accredited Employer count to 169. Just two years ago at this time C3 had 60 Accredited Employers. Included in this number are 21 General Contractors and 148 Specialty Contractors. In addition, C3 has 60 Project Participants currently active on C3 projects. For illustration purposes, we have had more than 50 Project Participants who have already completed their work on a C3 project that are no longer counted in this number. In total, C3 counts 229 construction companies that currently have C3 accreditation.
Today, there are nine C3 projects under construction with five more scheduled to begin in during the next few months. Included among those under construction are projects for Texas Children’s Hospital, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Memorial Hermann Healthcare System, Museum of Fine Arts-Houston, JLL and the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. It is important to note that six C3 projects have been completed.
Another way to illustrate the growth of C3 is in the 9,208 craft workers employed by C3 accredited companies whose credentials reside in the C3 Training Database. Further, through March, there have been 3,937,218 man-hours worked on all C3 projects with 15 recordable incidents translating to an OSHA recordable incident rate of .76, far below the national average of 3.5 for the construction industry. Maybe more importantly, the 15 active and completed C3 projects have yet to register a lost-time injury.
Speaking of safety, the C3 Safety Committee rolled out safety refresher training at the beginning of this year. This training is delivered in 12 modules, one per month, as toolbox talks on C3 projects by the GC, or as internal safety training within an individual company. Since OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 are required only once in a career, and the great majority of people forget most of what they learn within a week, this training, developed by construction industry safety professionals, is intended to continually educate the construction worker and reinforce the importance of working safely. Just three months after its launch, C3 Safety Training has already been delivered to 4,446 individuals.
The C3 Safety Training curriculum is available on the C3 website and can be downloaded free of charge.
Outside of safety, maybe the most important metric of all might be the number of companies that have established craft training programs linked to a career path for their craft professionals and the individuals they hope to attract to their organization in the future. This is a critical measurement that C3 intends to follow closely as we move forward. To underscore our belief in the importance of craft training programs and a skilled craft career path, C3 has begun its search for its Craft Training Champion, formally called People Development Program Manager. This individual will coach, counsel and consult with C3 companies as they develop their craft training programs. Stay tuned. We hope to have this individual in place by June.
In anticipation of the hiring of its People Development Program Manager, the C3 Craft Training Committee has worked to create a Craft Training Standard, which is nearing completion. It is now developing the tools to be included in a toolkit that will serve as a go-by for the various elements of a company’s craft training program.
In summary, as the numbers illustrate, C3 continues to grow and make measureable progress towards its objective of attracting candidates to a career in the craft trades in order to establish a skilled, sustainable craft workforce, but we still need the support and participation of all companies and professionals that are engaged in or with the commercial construction industry. If you represent an owner, contractor, specialty contractor, design firm or real estate organization, and want to learn more about C3, please contact me. I will explain how C3 is changing the world of construction.