Year after year, the face of construction changes with aging infrastructure and buildings demanding attention from the contractor community and skilled labor force. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) stated that 61,000 more construction jobs were open in 2018 over the same period in the previous year.

In 2017, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the largest network of craftsmen, innovators, and problem-solvers dedicated to building and enriching communities, conducted a survey and discovered 82 percent of respondents believe the availability and cost of labor will be an issue. 

Fast-forward three years to today, and NAHB membership was not mistaken. The challenge to meet the demand for skilled laborers, at an affordable cost, is nearly impossible, and the industry is feeling the effects, presenting an obstacle that requires a solution. 

Arthur Corwin, President of Railroad Construction Company, Inc., (RCC) in Paterson, NJ, states, “Our country has to repair its infrastructure. However, the construction industry lacks the capacity with both skilled craft labor and qualified contractors and subcontractors to safely complete the magnitude of work that is demanding our attention. What better way to fill this void than with an outreach program to MWSDVOBs. We all need this program to be successful if we are going to rebuild our nation.”

RCC is tackling this roadblock head-on, recognizing the answer far surpasses a quick fix. Established in 1926, RCC has developed from a railroad track construction and maintenance contractor into a complete turnkey operation, providing civil construction of facilities, bridges, highways, site work, and utilities. With nine decades in the industry, RCC is familiar with adversity and prepared to do what is required to provide the industry with skilled laborers who are equipped with the necessary resources to be successful.

After months of brainstorming and planning, RCC, along with coordinating and managing partners AEC Business Strategies and LDA Consulting, Inc. established the RCC “Training”-Express Mentor Program. 

The goal of the program is to foster effective long-term business relationships between women, minorities, and service-disabled owned veteran businesses in construction. Furthermore, promoting a diverse workforce. The team believes creating entrepreneurs and skilled laborers will foster new business and meet the demand to provide skilled laborers at a reasonable cost. 

Benefits of Diversity in Construction

Construction relies heavily on teamwork, and studies show that diverse teams are more engaged with one another. With the workforce becoming more diverse, companies will be ahead of the trend.

“There is a lot of competition in this industry, and there are many qualified people who perform a commercially useful function that struggle to compete with companies that have been in the industry for 20 years,” states Catherine Best. 

The goal of any company is to hire the best people. It is imperative that construction companies hire the most qualified workers, but why not create a pool of people from which to choose? 

According to a Gallup report, removing bias from the interview process and hiring on talent or skill alone, leads to 41 percent less absenteeism, 59 percent less turnover, and 70 percent fewer incidents.

Diverse Skills of Diversity Hires

Construction workers need to utilize critical reasoning skills to assess and fix problems. 

Diversity hires bring diverse skills to the team, different perspectives, and multiple problem-solving approaches.

If the goal is to complete work on time and budget, companies will benefit from Diversity hires, ultimately presenting additional opportunities to finish the project successfully. 

Catherine Best has worked with women-, minority-, and service-disable owned veteran businesses for several years and in varying situations, including the suppliers of goods and services to mentor-protégé programs. She can attest to the difference in skillset or ability when compared to non-MWSDVOB vendors is minimal. As Chief Compliance and Diversity Officer, Catherine supports and reinforces RCC’s dedication to performing a good faith effort through all phases of any construction project, allowing qualified subcontractors and suppliers the opportunity to work with an established contractor.

The RCC “Training” Express Mentor Program Process

RCC believes finding skilled talent starts at the high school level. College is not for everyone and mastering technical and interpersonal skills offers high school students alternative options and an employment advantage. 

“In order to secure the future of qualified MWSDVOBs, companies like RCC, who are committed to fostering the growth of MWSDVOB suppliers and subcontractors, have to be involved in providing the proper tools, training and internship opportunities. Without the contractor community support, new sustainable and diverse businesses will struggle to meet the demand, and the entire industry will suffer,” said Best. 

RCC has secured partnerships with the Paterson Charter School, New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, Bridging the Gap and the GI Go Fund to assist in recruiting students and veterans to fill the craft worker positions. Each session will include a program designed to target a Union Delegate presentation, interpersonal skills, and potential internship and employment opportunities.

The MWSDVOB will follow a similar program format, including presentations from utilities, contractors, and advocacy groups with the potential option for coaching sessions.

Chris Colabella, President of CISLeads, is one of the presenters, training companies to find the right projects to bid. “We’re excited to have the opportunity to help companies improve their skills and grow their businesses” said Colabella.

Applications for students, veterans, and MWSDVOBs are now available at Railroad Construction. The number of participants is limited. Should you have any questions, please contact the Program Coordinators.

There are several construction challenges in the New York metro area, including rising demand for affordable housing, as well as the greater pressures laid on the shoulders of builders and firms to make up for budgetary shortfalls or face blacklisting. It’s therefore not a surprise that people in the industry have their ears to the ground for the next great idea that’s going to cut costs and delays without sacrificing quality. 

According to recent reports, modular construction may be the solution that New York City builders consider. While this method is seldom used, costs continue to increase, which appears to be outpacing any risk factors that kept it out of the running before. Current construction projects in the area that use modular methods include the AC NoMad Modular Hotel by Marriott the affordable housing structure at 581 Grant Ave, numerous other real estate ventures.

Modular Construction, In a Nutshell

For those that haven’t looked carefully at the process before, the words “modular construction” might hearken to mental images of trailers and the Sears catalog houses of yore: Prefabricated, cookie-cutter designs. In truth, the kind of modular construction that’s coming into vogue in NYC uses the same materials, techniques, and standards as your facility built the traditional way. The structure is broken down into sections, or modules, that are constructed in factory settings, then transported and fitted on site. 

What Kinds of Cost Benefits Are There to Modular Construction?

Modular.org reports that building in this way has many benefits, including: 

• A safer, indoor work environment with fewer dangers for construction workers and fewer potentially costly liabilities;
• Reduced material waste through careful control of inventory and recycling materials where possible;
• Faster completion, up to 30 to 50 percent faster than conventional projects because work in the factory setting and the foundation can happen at the same time;
• Fewer water delays due to weather, because the majority of construction is completed indoors, and more.

All of the above benefits have their ways of saving money, whether by reducing the cost of materials by reducing waste, or by eliminating a number of potential delays. The latter is especially crucial at a time when the law as it stands means penalties for construction firms that are deemed to be taking too long on certain projects. 

Despite the build-transport-assemble system, the result, once completed, looks no different than structures built on-site in a conventional way. 

Do Risks Outweigh the Benefits? 

There are likely several reasons, other than lack of awareness, that modular construction only accounts for about five percent of commercial construction projects. For instance, Million Acres reports that modular construction can pose a problem in a few instances: 

• Transporting the modules poses its own unique challenges, given their size and delicacy.
• Installing them once transported, especially in dense urban areas, will likewise be an issue to negotiate. 
• Zoning laws, which differ from locale to locale, may prevent its use. 
• While modular projects allow for lots of customization, it’s not as versatile as more conventional means. 

For now, a growing trend in using modular construction in commercial and residential ventures continues, with unusual optimism concerning cost-effective, affordable housing initiatives.

It might come as a surprise to some that there is an increasing demand for usable space for science labs in the New York City area, particularly space for life sciences. While it is easy to assume that this manner of work will take place largely in hospitals or on college campuses, in an area such as this, with community-wide efforts to improve human quality of life as well as the environment centered around human life, continuing research and more space to do it has come into very high demand, and rather than build new labs, converting existing structures has been the more common move. 

Just across the river from Midtown Manhattan, Long Island City is the site of one of the latest endeavors of this type, InnoLabs Life Sciences Facility. JLL Capital Markets has secured $156 million in financing for 45-18 Court Square, intending to refit it into a suitable property for a full life sciences lab and research facility. 

What Can You Expect of a Project Like 45-18 Court Square?

Currently, the Court Square property includes a 6-story office building with a freight elevator and a basement large enough for storage and equipment. It has more than 160,000 square feet of usable space, as well as another potential 100,000+ square feet of usable space. 

The intent is to convert this into a “purpose-built” lab facility with a few significant changes, such as:

• Building a 4-story addition above the 2-story annex; and
• Two ground-up additions on top of vacant parking lots, each 6 stories in height.  

Are There Certain Qualities a Building Needs to Be Suitable for Lab Setups?

A number of properties like 45-18 Court Square need upgrades and adjustments to be safe spaces for lab areas, to include improved electricals, making available loading areas, proper and safe ventilation, and more. The Court Square location, sources report, has several of characteristics going for it that already make it an attractive spot to start building, including: 

• Quality and type of floor plates already present in existing structures;
• The freight elevator setup, which makes transporting sensitive equipment and specimens much easier;
• Its sizeable basement for storage; and
• Ample square footage of developable space. 

Its central location in Long Island City is another characteristic that investors are hoping will make the finished property especially useful as this industry continues to boom. 

For Completion, What Remains to Be Done?

For bidders considering this or similar projects, the nature of the various tasks to be completed is present in the relevant details: Any firm taking this on can expect some refurbishing of existing systems, such as electrical and plumbing, including the need to ensure that sources of backup power can be secured. Multiple-story additions that meet the same standards as the rest of the facility are also on the docket. Firms are encouraged to keep a weather eye on the horizon for further updates. With continuing demand for lab research space in the metro area, Court Square will come up again, and so will similar opportunities. 

In recent weeks, protracted infrastructure updates have been a significant point of discussion in breaking construction news for Manhattan. In the face of major undertakings that will carry forward with ongoing work for developers and laborers for the next twenty years, there’s some optimism in knowing that another long-standing project in Manhattan may finally see an end in sight. With the 2020s underway, the East Side Access project, aiming to link Grand Central Terminal to the Long Island railroad, may, at last, be on its way to completion. In interviews this year, Governor Cuomo has boldly sworn to this, even if he has to pick up a shovel and do it himself. 

Why Have There Been So Many Delays on East Side Access? 

The East Side Access project has been in development since the 1990s, but the inspiration for it came in the late 1960s. With its completion predicted for 2009, this deadline has been missed by more than a decade now. According to City & State, the project, which would build train tunnels under the East River, has readjusted its deadline at least six times, and the budget has nearly tripled in this time. The hope, when finally finished, is that the new connection will reduce congestion on the LIRR side of things, where demand for steady transportation is growing (with 90 million riding every year), and they struggle to keep up. 

Sources attribute this tardiness to unexpected delays and budget constraints, which are issues that have been discussed at length here at CISleads that tend to sit further and further outside of developer’s hands the longer a project goes on. They are some of the major shortfalls of your average open-ended project, and the East Side Access project, in terms of project length, is not an average anything.

What Remains to Be Done?

Since at least February, sources have been reporting that the hard deadline for completion is December 2022 and not a day later. At that point in time, journalists were given a tour of the progress far beneath the streets of Manhattan, where laborers have been hard at work round the clock. Seven months later, it was reported that still more funding was sought. At the end of the year, then, what will fill the coming two years? 

Thus far, laborers are moving toward the completion of: 

• The new tracks running under the East River.
• The new platforms under Grand Central Station.
• A new entrance to Grand Central Station at 48th street, as well as repairing a rail connection in Queens that has gone without refurbishment for some time.

The MTA assures that the deadline is in place, and the budget at $11.2 billion, will not go a penny over. Once open in 2022, the new connections are expected to reduce congestion in LIRR and show at least a 50 percent increase in commuters from Long Island and Queens into Manhattan.

In November of 2019, the City of New York enacted new laws that will affect all roof construction in the metropolitan area. Aiming to attack issues of sustainability, including clean air and power conservation, laws 92 and 94 state that any major construction on a roof must be covered in either solar panels or a green roof system. 

Part of the City Council’s Climate Mobilization Act, these are single steps in the city’s campaign to move toward the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and an increase in renewable energy sources. 

What Is the Extent of the New Laws?

Laws 92 and 94 come together to establish the legal requirements and exceptions for new construction and the inclusion of solar panels or green space when building new roofs or improving old ones. 

Specifics include: 

• The laws together affect new construction, new roofs on expansions and additions for existing buildings, as well as roofs that are being fully replaced. 
• “Replacing the entire existing roof deck or roof assembly will trigger compliance with these new laws,” reports Hoffman Architects. 
• Affected buildings and construction types are required to install either solar paneling, green roofs, or a combination of the two. 
• There is a certain size that a contiguous roof area must meet before it is required to create a sustainable roof zone. For residential spaces, the requirement is 100 square feet or greater, and for all other buildings, it is 200 feet. 
• Overly steep rooftops are exempted from the green space requirement, as they would be nearly impossible to plant vegetation on. 
• Apartment terraces and schools will not be affected by this legislation.
• Property owners are required to buy and maintain the solar panels, but legislators expect that energy savings will make up the cost. 
• All new filings on or after November 15th, 2019, for building permits are required to certify their compliance with the new laws. 

How Will This Affect Future Construction Projects?

There are several ways in which these new laws are going to affect future endeavors, some of which homeowners and property owners have begun to voice since the legislation’s passing. Homeowners and developers have expressed concerns about the additional cost inherent in the addition of solar panels or green roofs, not just from the installations themselves but also the loss of interest from potential buyers with skeptical views of sustainable technology. For new construction, it will always mean that consideration for these new systems will go in at the planning stages, just as electrical and other utilities might. 

While property owners building or expanding their dream home must bear the financial burden of installing and managing their solar panels, to the tune of an average of $30,000, legislators believe that the savings in energy costs will make up the cost. Some say this is not happening quickly enough, and question a lack of tax incentives to help in this manner. For developers of larger structures, that savings may become more quickly apparent. However, it is still an additional cost to consider in the planning stages, just like mandated bird-safe glass on high rises, reported here at CISLeads in 2019.