FMI's E&C Industry Insight

Let Us Hear How Your Company is Attracting, Developing and Retaining Its Talent By Kelley Chisholm Now that the economy has started to make a comeback, the war for talent is once again in the headlines. Baby boomers will start to retire in droves during the next several years, with fewer people to replace them. Many talented people in the A/E/C industry who were laid off during the Great Recession moved on to different industries, never to return to construction. For more than 15 years, FMI has distributed its Talent Development survey to construction firms nationwide in order to identify current training and development practices, trends and challenges affecting today’s market. We want to know how companies have fared over the past several years and what the future holds in terms of attracting, developing and retaining their most valuable asset — their people. We invite you to participate in FMI’s latest Talent Development Survey. The information we gather will be published in the early fall and will show how your company compares to others and what some of the best practices are in our industry, as well as articles on a number of training-related topics. As usual, we will feature a few companies who have been innovative and successful over the years in terms of training and development, and that company could be yours! To participate in this important survey, click on this link: http://www.cvent.com/d/qcqvwm or contact Kelley Chisholm at 919.785.9215. Your feedback is appreciated as we continue to provide research to the construction industry on this ever-important topic. The survey is open until the end of May.

Adding Science to the Art of Leader Selection By Jake Appelman When the time comes to select a new leader, difficult questions arise, such as whether to choose an internal or external candidate, what skill sets to seek, how to assess for intangibles such as interpersonal skills and cultural fit or how to find the right blend of operational experience and executive leadership ability. In an industry that values instinct, it is no surprise that many executive teams rely on traditional methods of interviews and resume reviews to make hiring decisions. While instinct and “feeling” about a person can be effective, human resources and industrial psychology research shows that adding science to the art of personnel selection can significantly improve the odds of a successful hire.

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Assess Your Leadership Pipeline By Kelley Chisholm Succession planning is a continuous and systematic process that should be tied to the organization’s strategic plan. In other words, the details of a succession plan are determined by what the company wants to be in the future. Succession planning includes identifying, assessing and developing talent to ensure leadership continuity. It must allow for unforeseen and constantly changing business needs and reflect the way the company wants to grow in the future by aligning with strategic objectives and goals. Careful succession planning now can make the difference in retaining key talent and ensuring your firm’s ongoing profitability and success.

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FMI’s First Quarter Construction Outlook, 2013 By Randy Giggard Although the strength of individual markets is shifting, the forecast for total construction put in place for 2013 continues to show an increase of 8% over 2012 levels, according to FMI’s First Quarter Construction Outlook, 2013. The $918,897 million estimate is a solid improvement, but FMI does not expect to return to the days of annual construction above the trillion-dollar mark until 2015. The star of the show is residential buildings, with a 23% rise in single-family buildings. While much of business sector is still in a wait-and-see mode, some industries are breaking the mold and planning for growth. Commercial, lodging and office construction are starting to pick up the pace. The rich shale regions of the country are seeing a lot of construction activity. With oil and gas exploration booming, these regions are in need of housing as well as the construction of roads, rail and pipelines to move the product from the fields to refining and distribution sites. In addition, the potential for greater energy independence and lower energy prices is helping to make the U.S. more competitive in the global market and enticing more manufacturing to relocate in the U.S.

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From the World of Sports to the Business World: Leveraging Strengths through Coaching By Tim Tokarczyk What do Michael Jordan, Bart Starr and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have in common? Certainly, they are all successful, championship-winning athletes. They all share a common drive to excel in their respective sport. In addition, they have benefitted from having terrific coaches to help them along the way. Michael Jordan had Phil Jackson and together they won 6 titles with the Chicago Bulls. Bart Starr had Vince Lombard, and they won 3 titles in Green Bay together. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had John Wooden in his college days at UCLA and they had 3 championship wins. The world of sports has long embraced the role great coaches play in increasing performance. The world of business has slowly moved in that same direction, especially in recent years. Executive coaching seeks to achieve many of the same results — to increase performance, help individuals more effectively leverage their strengths and shore up areas where they might be weaker. Executive coaching is not about applause, motivational speeches or most of those clichés that come to mind when thinking about athletic coaches, but it does achieve similar results. Just like Jordan, Starr and Abdul-Jabbar could not have reached their peak levels of performance alone; we cannot achieve our full potential of leadership without some guidance and feedback.

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Social Media Isn’t New: Even Cavemen Did It By Cynthia Paul Your web page just received its 5000th “Like” and your team is sharing high-fives around the office. You are well on your way to having a thriving social media strategy. Or, are you? Social media is changing the relationships companies have with their customers, vendors, suppliers and yes, even their employees. Organizations have long controlled the messages that went out into the marketplace about their company, products and services. Except for a few unfortunate incidents where a business finds itself on the front page of a newspaper, the company was the one who determined what the market knew. Social media has changed that. The power of communications has move into communities and out of the hands of corporate marketing.

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Beyond Vertical Integration: The Re-engineering of the Design and Construction Industry By Sabine Hoover FMI is proud to present its latest research on vertical integration, which is a follow-up article to our previous publication, “The Consilience of Design and Construction.” In this article, we look at some of the current trends that drive today’s convergence of design and construction disciplines, including 1) digital ubiquity, 2) a continuing squeeze for capital, and 3) a shift to systems thinking. The article also highlights two FMI case studies on Fluor and Kiewit.

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Are You Ready To Transfer Ownership of Your Company? By Landon Funsten According to “FMI’s Ownership Transfer and Management Succession Survey,” only 47% of respondents believe they have capable, strong managers who could run the company in their absence. Furthermore, only 44% said they have a formal plan in place to transition themselves out of managing the business, and just 64% have a formal plan in place to ensure continuity of operations in event of their death.

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Preparing to Lead Tomorrow’s Workforce Today By Kim Morton There are many clear and immediate impacts of the Great Recession in the construction industry. Nearly all leaders face the challenges of dwindling backlogs, fierce competition leading to seemingly irrational pricing and a more demanding client base. As painful as these issues are for leaders, it is the next generation of leaders who will feel the effect of this recession most deeply. Consider how the events of the past four to five years will shape the values, beliefs, expectations and ultimately the leadership style of a typical employee who reaches a level of significant leadership responsibility in the year 2023. Most leaders tend to overestimate the amount of change that will occur in the short term, while underestimating the change that will take place in the long term. As the design and construction industry executive begins to imagine the world of a typical 2023 leader, he or she will need to prepare for a war for talent that will define the competitive landscape of the future.

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Nonresidential Construction Index First Quarter 2013 Highlights By Randy Giggard The NRCI index score of 58.1 for the first quarter of 2013 matches the first quarter of 2012, and it is only a few points better than 2011. Nevertheless, even though the scores look the same, there are a number of underlying differences. Depending on where you look or what markets you are looking in, there are fundamental bright spots in the economy.

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