Is Smarter Construction Equipment the Answer To Construction’s Growing Skills Shortage?

While the industry is already in the midst of a labor shortage, things look likely to get a lot worse, demand continues to increase and labor supply decreases. On the one hand, policy makers around the world are advancing agendas that seem to support projections of increasing demand for construction well into the future. In the US, billions have been allocated to new manufacturing and infrastructure spending, and the Biden Administration has advanced a goal of 2 million new or renovated housing units to compensate for a deficit in development over the past decade and to help combat an increasing lack of affordability in housing. At the same time, the existing construction labor pool is continuing to age more quickly than the rest of the country’s labor pool. Based on labor department statistics, it seems likely that the industry in the US could lose about 2 million of its most highly skilled workforce over the next decade. 

While more and better training opportunities would certainly represent one way to help ease the industry’s problems, another answer could be to introduce construction equipment that reduces the amount of labor needed to perform tasks, lowers the skills required and creates job opportunities within the industry that are cleaner, safer and less physically demanding. While traditional industry equipment manufacturers have been slow to promote the commercialization of remotely operated and autonomous construction equipment, a new generation of startup entrepreneurs, many with backgrounds at traditional equipment companies, are forging new partnerships and starting new companies to fill the gap.