Larsen, who is on a CURT committee addressing problems of handoffs to construction, says owners cannot simply point the finger at designers and suppliers. “We have come to expect more for less, insisting on just-in-time materials delivery and quicker and cheaper design delivery,” he says.

However, in a recessionary market, suppliers are unable to maintain large inventories, and design firms have been forced to lay off employees to stay afloat, affecting their ability to react as quickly as owners might demand, Larsen says. “That is why CURT is trying to get all parties together to find ways to improve processes to make handoffs more efficient,” he says.

One of the long-term concerns among owners has been safety. “Workplace safety is more than just a journey to zero incidents, but to ensure a more productive and profitable project for everyone,” says Greg Sizemore, executive vice president of CURT. He says the industry has made great strides in improving safety in the workplace, “but safety requires constant vigilance.”

CII is studying how safety can be improved. “Most safety studies have focused on lagging indicators, studying the cause of accidents,” says Thomas. He says CII's new study will try to examine leading indicators, like individual's levels of training and ability to recognize hazards in avoiding accidents. “When you have contractors all doing the right things and there still are accidents, you want to find out why,” Thomas says.

Help Wanted ... Eventually

One area that has not been an immediate concern recently to the industry has been the workforce. With unemployment rates still over 13%, industry recruitment is not high on the agenda.

However, owners worry that, once the market turns around, the industry will be hard pressed to supply the demand for experienced craftspeople and managers. “Nobody is worked up about workforce development today, but they will be soon,” says Daniel Groves, director of operations for CURT and manager of the Construction Workforce Development Center.

In 2009, Groves was instrumental in developing a tool that contractors, owners, unions and labor suppliers can use to help determine the future need for trade workers. ENR named Groves one of the Top 25 Newsmakers for 2010 for his work (ENR 1/18/10 p. 28).

The tool, which accumulates data provided by owners, contractors and unions on current and planned projects to predict craft-worker demand, has been rebranded and is about to be relaunched, Groves says. The program, renamed the Construction Labor Market Analyzer, can now be found at http://myclma.com/. “We are in the final testing stages by our current users, and we should be ready to reintroduce it by the CURT national convention in November,” says Groves.

Groves says the tool now covers about 20 states. “It is now heavily focused on the industrial side, but we hope to expand the database nationally and to include buildings, as well. The more projects in the database, the better owners and contractors can analyze labor needs,” he says.