labor force costs

The other day I was performing a Final Inspection for one of our builders in town and I asked the Project Superintendent simply, “How do you do it?”

This Project Superintendent is name Romano, and he has about 15 years more experience than I have in construction- he has been in the field the entire time.  I look at the veteran operating in some level of Zen mastery and wonder how he does it.  Romano has ubiquitous blue tape attached to his shirt in varying lengths, going in various directions; caulk on his hands, shirt, pants; orange fire foam globbed in spots on him and his shirt- he rips off a small piece of blue tape from his shirt and plucks it down on the brand new wood floor.  The floor has at least 1 piece of blue tape within every single 3’x 3’ section of the entire floor.  The walls are smattered with blue tape as well.  He is conducting the symphony of workers and interacting with me- the professional judge & jury of his work.
As an inspector, I clearly am less adapted to his level of multi-tasking and amazed that he isn’t sitting in the middle of the floor curled up in a ball.  The flooring installers are clearly incompetent, the painters have drips in the paint, on the hardwood floor, in the carpet.  The electrician forgot at least 2 fixtures that Romano had to cap to pass inspection.  The windows are open this hot day because we aren’t sure who forgot to wire the air conditioner- is that the electrician’s responsibility or the HVAC contractor- in either case, they both decided not to make that final connection.
“Romano, how do you do it?”
He looked at me and said “If I don’t do it, it will never get done.”  To me his job amounted to a professional babysitter for well paid contractors that have no clue or bandwidth to perform their responsibilities.
I couldn’t help but ask if he had paid them yet- it was none of my business but I really wanted to know how the inner-workings of a contractor this size.
“Of course, but they do not understand what it means to be done.  They are paid, but many of them are unable to do the job without direction from me- if I don’t catch them when they are here and provide direction, it won’t get done.  Then I have to call to arrange for the contractor to come back on site, or I just do it myself when time matters.  The only solution I see is we need to pay our subcontractors more so they can hire qualified people.  Unfortunately, those decisions are above my pay grade.” 
It was a topic we both agreed on.  Our conversation evolved from there.  As long as we continue to pay trades people essentially the same rate they were getting paid in the early 1990’s, what do you expect? 
The problem is this: the guy swinging the hammer (sweating the copper, taping the duct…) can’t earn enough working for someone else as an apprentice.  In search of a bigger payday, they strike out on their own and become their own contracting business- no boss taking a cut of your take home pay.  This budding entrepreneur ends up short on trade skills since he could not afford to learn while working and training under somebody else.
The consumer drives the problem by wanting more for less.  One builder could build a 3000 square foot house for $300 per square foot and another builder could build that same house for $150 per square foot.  Much of the price variation is in the quality of the work.  A layperson may not fully understand what I mean by ‘quality’ until there is a problem which needs fixing.  An experienced tradesman can foresee problems and construct with those pitfalls in mind.  During construction is the correct time to take the opportunity to set the building up for easier maintenance and prevent problems.  Some of this goes unseen & therefor unappreciated.
Within the definition of experienced installer falls experience with different construction methods which comes in to play as well.  Something as simple as utilizing conduit to run electrical as compared to routing electrical power in NM (romex).  Conduit takes more training to install efficiently; NM does the same job in perfect conditions.  Conducting an electrical repair or rerouting something in the future is much easier with conduit as compared to NM.  NM is much more susceptible to damage than wires in protected tubing. Conduit may cost slightly more than NM but the trained labor force can install conduit nearly as quickly as a person installing NM.  One is a better end-product than the other even though they both do the same job.  The plumbing trades have these similar tradeoffs between products as well (CPVC as compared to copper piping for water supply).  One takes more training to install properly and the resulting installation is considered superior.  There are simple, tangible tradeoffs similar as to the ones described above and then there is the less tangible experience.  A properly trained employee that was shown how to install fidgets correctly at the beginning of his tenure will have learned more about fidgets after 5 years working with fidgets than a worker that installed them for 5 years but was never train on the proper installation method.  We all see these same comparisons in the work we do daily, understand that same truth caries through in construction as well.
One solution is to bring vocational studies back to high schools and pay these graduates a respectable living wage.  These classes will help give this trained workforce the basic skills and knowledge to work for a contractor right out of school.  The contractor would be able to afford to pay his workers better as his workers will be better prepared with the skills needed to get the job done correctly the first time.
Unions offer training along with better wages and benefits for the workers- this is another path for a worker to develop the proper trade skills.
Many local community colleges offer coursework related to construction trades.
No matter the path, buildings should cost more than they do to construct.  The production-built homes rely heavily on the field manager cherry-picking the right crews to construct them and the ability for the field manager being able to manage around a less than ideally trained crew.  One way to improve the workforce is to incentivize well trained workers.  This is physically hard work, they should get paid well to do it.  Our best path to improved construction quality is better pay for workers.