In February, the Cold-Formed Steel Engineers Institute asked me to speak about supply chain issues in the steel framing industry. In my talk, I expanded the scope to include resilience: I discussed how our employees, companies, communities, and world could better prepare for the next major event impacting our market. In this article, I will discuss what happened to our industry since late 2019, how the smart participants are responding, and a few strategies for preparing your workforce for the next major impact.
Construction is cyclic. Anyone who has studied the industry or been involved in construction for any length of time will tell you this. With our aging workforce, you don’t have to go too far to find someone who has been through a couple of downturns. I was born into the construction industry: my father formed Allen Construction Company a few years before I was born, and it went bankrupt when I was three. The ups and downs of the industry are not new but what we have seen over the past two years is different: many of us heard the word “unprecedented” more during 2020 than at any other time in our lives. We know that the root cause was the pandemic but what were the specific issues with construction materials?