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By Bonnie McFeeters. |
No matter what your talents or interests, there's a good chance you could find just the career you're looking for in the construction industry.
As one of Canada's four largest industries, it directly employs more than 700,000 people. The average weekly wage in the industry is $502 - not as high as in the mining industry but almost $100 more than the average weekly wage a person is likely to receive in most other industrial occupations.
It's also an industry that attracts dollars. Last year, alone, the value of all construction work performed was almost $57 billion - not peanuts, any way you look at it.
And the spin-off effects of all that construction investment are amazing when you consider that four support jobs are created in other sectors every time a new construction job gets underway.
To know what career has the best growth potential or what profession offers the best mobility one can go to associations like the Canadian Construction Association, Association of Professional Engineers of Canada and the Canadian Building Trades Department that make it their business to know where growth sectors are.
As well, colleges, universities, and a number of government agencies and departments, like Statistics Canada, Labour Canada and Employment Immigration Canada have information on hand - everything from job descriptions to wage rates, training requirements and advancement possibilities in any given career.
In general, these departments will tell you that educational requirements vary greatly in the industry. Architects and engineers must complete four of five years of university. Tradespeople, particularly those belonging to unions, must have a grade 10 or a grade 12 education and successfully complete the trade's apprenticeship program. That can take anywhere from a few months to five years.
In between those two extreme are hundreds of occupations which require specific types of university degrees, college diplomas, special industry licenses or general on-the-job-training.
Many people who work in the industry spend all of their time on the job site. They could be carpenters, labourers, electricians or any number of specialized tradespeople. They're probably the most visible people on a construction site - the ones you see hammering, pounding and pouring cement as you walk past.
But don't let that fool you. Like many other industries, what you see is only the tip of the iceberg.
There are thousands of people who work behind the scenes, providing the financing, designing the structure, manufactoring and transporting the building materials, inspecting the finished product, creating the advertising campaigns and even decorating the model suites.
In fact, from the time a developer or land speculator stakes out a piece of property, it could be months, or even years, before anything is done to it.
It's also possible that the land has to be rezoned - and depending on a community's building by-laws, it could take years to get all the necessary government approvals.
Along the way a whole group of lawyers, bankers, accountants and insurers have also grabbed a piece of the action - and that's before the hole has even been dug for the building!
Now let's assume an architect has already been hired to create plans for the project, the consulting engineers (structural, mechanical, electrical are most often used on buildings) have been retained and the general contractor, or project manager, has been chosen.
If all systems are go from that point of view, the project will "go out to tender". In other words, companies that wish to work on the project estimate how much it will cost them to complete their portion of the work. These "bids" are then submitted to the company, or person, who has issued the tenders.
The bids are examined and in most cases, but not all, the contractor who has issued the lowest bid, receives the work.
These contractors, often called subcontractors or trade contractors, employ specialized tradespeople who have usually completed intensive apprenticeship training program.
As construction of the building progresses, dozens of trades will spend time on the site, excavating, erecting steel, installing windows and doing the finishing work inside the structure.
Along the way, materials will be delivered, equipment operators will man the cranes, safety inspectors will visit the site and building inspectors will poke through the building with one eye on their building code book and the other on their tape measure.
Although marketing and real estate people are sometimes hired right from the very beginning to promote and advertise a development, quite often that is done when construction is nearing the end.
Because the construction industry is a labour-intensive industry that uses man skills which are centuries old, people assume it has been untouched by technical revolution. But how wrong they are!
Right now, computers and software applications are streamlining the design and drafting activities to a remarkable degree. Computers are being installed in almost every contracting company's office to keep track of materials, develop contract bids and do the accounting. Even manufacturing plants are being automated. Data banks are now used to store hundreds of formulae, making it easy to consistently mix the perfect batch of concrete.
Other technological changes are also occurring. For instance, site surveyors now use laser equipment to mark off the land and robots are being used to perform some of the dull assembly-line tasks that used to be done by people.
Even when traditional "male-only" stigma which was hung around the industry's neck ever since the beginning of time is starting to fade.
Statistics show that during the past 10 years an increasing number of women are beginning to graduate as architects, draftspeople, engineers, and technicians. Most of the trades, like plumbing and cement masons, still lack many women but the industry itself is now starting to show a greater interest in admitting women to its ranks and is developing programs to help women enter traditional male roles.
There are a whole host of new professions which now surround the industry - consultants, forecasters, futurists, and planners, who are making it their business to study the market place and offer solutions on how our cities should develop, what type of house we should build, and what we should build them out of.
But, having said all that, the industry, in spite of al the opportunities it offers, also has some glaring weaknesses.
It is dependent on a highly mobile workforce. Since many projects are only a short duration, say a few weeks or months, workers have to move to new projects throughout the year. The projects may be located miles from home, forcing you to leave your family and friends for much of the year.
In many cases, working conditions on a construction site are harsh. A job site is as hot as a furnace in the summer and it's either muddy or dusty - there are no in-betweens. In the winter, when the wind is blowing through the open windows of a building or you're high in a scaffold, it will seem like you're in the Arctic.
Its major drawback is probably its cyclical nature. Like other large industries - mining, for instance - the construction sector is highly dependent on world economic conditions to keep it healthy.
When the economies of Canada and the United States are in the doldrums, so is the construction industry.
In terms of dollars and cents, investment in the industry only grew by 1.6 per cent between 1983 and 1984. That's because high interest rates choked off the investment needed to finance construction.
The cutback in investment dollars meant that multi-million dollar projects which were scheduled to get under way, didn't. Instead, the plans sat on shelves collecting dust.
Jobs were lost. Last year, the unemployment rate in the construction industry was twice the national average. Twenty-three per cent off all the people in the industry were without jobs and in some professions and some areas of country the statistics were much worse.
But like every cyclical industry, upswings in activity are always just around the corner. Most construction industry experts admit that boom days of the 1970s won't ever be seen again but they're quick to point out that construction activity can't help but improve as the economy improves. The only civilization that doesn't need new houses, new roads and new plants is a dead civilization.
©1999 TG Magazine/Le Magazine TG
tgmag@tgmag.ca