“With construction, you typically think of roadside construction and hard manual labor. I didn’t ever think about the office side of it,” explains Hannah Crawford, assistant project manager and intern for CCI Mechanical in Salt Lake City, Utah. “I think a lot of people have the same understanding that I did. There’s so many options within the construction industry that many people don’t know about; these people are overlooking a great opportunity.” Not only are the younger workforce candidates missing out on opportunity, the construction industry as a whole is actually missing out, with only 3 percent of young adults aged 18 to 25 choosing construction as a career when asked what they want to do in life, according to a 2017 National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) study.

Crawford’s CCI counterpart, project engineer Sam Johnson concurs. “Growing up you see construction projects, but there’s not a whole lot of understanding on everything that has to go into that to make everything work. I think that applying technology to it, which is the direction the industry is going, I think that’s really promising.” The idea that technology can serve as a bridge between construction’s generational skills gap and also serve as an attractant for young talent is becoming a movement within the industry that can help restore its workforce to pre-2008 recession levels. Aconex VP of Strategic Accounts Garrett Harley elaborates, “I think technology is another emerging way to get people into this business. Not many people coming out of school understand there’s this much tech in construction. It’s an exciting time to be a part of it.” Harley’s sentiments from Construction Dive are also echoed by industry leaders in KPMG’s Make it, or break it – Global Construction Survey 2017 report, which states that “92 percent of U.S. construction executives believe that technology will fundamentally change their businesses, and help them bridge the performance gap.”

Instant Value

While the tide may finally be changing toward greater tech adoption within construction, one of the key aspects of the transition seems to be in the fact that technology is better preparing young talent. Drake Carter, an estimator and project manager for Colorado-based civil construction firm Solid  Earth is a testament to this theory. “I went from being in the field freezing in the middle of December to being in the office using Bluebeam to do digital takeoffs.”

Carter’s confidence in his ability was boosted by using the technology to catch a potential mistake in a paper-based takeoff, which saved his company $50,000. “For me to be this young kid, it’s humbling but it also makes me really proud of myself that I can bring something to the company and that I have something to offer that no one else can offer to the company. Maybe I wasn’t the best at pouring concrete or maybe I wasn’t the best operator, but having technology give me the right tool that I can make something of really helped me develop a sense of adulthood and helped me flow into the [project manager] role that I’m in now. There was a weird transition period from just being a shovel holder to now having this authority over a lot of different guys, grown men out in the field. Just crews of guys coming up to you like, “Project manager guy, big boss, how are you doing?”

Brianna Karelin went from the classroom at the University of Cincinnati to a full-time position as a prefabrication engineer at Helix Electric, thanks in part to her technological savvy. While the firm was working on a seven-story assisted living facility, Karelin’s internship supervisor challenged her to create a digital drawing for field installers. “Give me two weeks,” she told him, “I’ll give you something decent. Give me a month and I’ll come up with something great.” Karelin did, and the process was an immediate impact to the firm, so much so that Karelin not only gained full-time employment as an engineer, she even got to write her own job description.

Going Full Circle

CCI project manager Ian Goduti is well aware of the positive impact his firm has seen through technology in acquiring new talent. “We found that the more we enabled people who were a lot better at technology, like our interns, and really just let them loose on the technical side, or on our process side, it allowed myself and my fellow PMs to focus on the big picture on our actual projects. It really has expedited our whole talent acquisition initiative.”

By investing in internships with real-world experience and empowering young talent with technology, the firm is seeing the value the interns are making right away on the jobsite, as well as the value they are giving in onboarding the next wave of young talent—which ultimately helps the firm’s future. Upon graduation, Ian’s intern, Hannah Crawford, will stay on full time as a project manager for the company, as her internship experience has made her valuable, and given her a sense of purpose as well. “I’d never, in a million years, thought that I would be in construction,” says Crawford. “My mom laughs at the thought of me wearing a hard hat and steel-toed boots; I grew up with sparkles and princess dresses. I’m happy that I ended up in this industry, because I do enjoy it. And the fact that there’s not tons of interns or women in this industry, it gives me more confidence to be able to say, ‘Okay, I’m doing this, and it’s different than what everyone else is doing.’”