Enough with old ways of thinking

There was a piece in The Times (of London) recently saying that the UK was desperately short of ‘brickies’ and ‘sparks’. To translate, there is a crisis in construction when it comes to finding people to meet the need for more houses and improved infrastructure.

I have absolutely no doubt that my fellow diamond drillers and concrete sawers around the globe will identify with that because it’s proving to be very difficult to hire people who want a career in our fantastic industry.

At D-Drill alone, we need around 20 to 30 new drillers over the next couple of years to meet our ambitious growth plans but it’s going to be a huge task to find them.

I’ve spoken to and read comments from fellow companies around the world and the problem is one that we are all seeing and feeling.

There are some fairly simplistic commentaries out there for where the root of the problem lies but we are going to have to overcome that for the good of the industry globally.

I certainly feel this should form part of the IACDS association’s vision over the next couple of years. We may not come up with all the answers during my two years as president but I would like to handover in a couple of years with a clear path towards solving this huge issue.

If we allow ourselves to get bogged down in old ways of thinking: ‘why should I train someone if another company is going to come to pinch them off me when they are qualified?’ or ‘young people today don’t want to come and do a dirty construction job’, then we will have lost before we have even started.

Yes, we do run the risk of training someone up and then seeing them go elsewhere but that’s true in every industry and if we take that attitude, diamond drilling and concrete sawing will end up dying a slow and painful death.

As an industry, if we think collectively, by training the next generation of people it will be to the benefit of the whole sector.

And, yes, maybe there are some young people out there who have, because of years of negativity around construction and the specialisms that surround it, been put off coming into this industry as a career.

In the UK, and I know this is the case elsewhere too, it’s been the case too long that youngsters have been encouraged from school to college to university and then into an office job.

Of course, I am generalising but the statistics bear out that there is some truth in what I am saying – otherwise we wouldn’t have the crisis in numbers that we are facing.

We need 400,000 more people in construction in the UK alone to meet Government targets on housing and infrastructure so that figure must be well into the millions when we look worldwide.

So we have to look at a positive solution to this issue and I certainly believe that we, as an association, have a duty to look at this problem and tackle it head-on in the coming months and years.

As I said above, this should form part of the vision of where we want to take the association and, indeed, are whole industry over the next few years.

How we improve the image of construction and its many specialisms is another part of that vision and will go hand-in-hand with recruitment. The more respect for construction, the more chance we have of drafting in better people.

Therefore, we have to shout about what makes our industry great. I do my very best to do that in the UK by taking as many media opportunities that I can and speaking up for our wonderful world of work.

I would urge all my fellow members to make sure you are doing the same and make sure you share your positive news with this magazine as well as all of the exciting and different jobs you are doing.

Furthermore, put yourself up for Construction awards in your own country as well as the IACDS Diamond Awards at Bauma next year.

Everything that we can do to promote our industry can only be a good thing for the long-term future!

I’m at Juliewhite@d-drill.co.uk

Julie White, President of IACDS