Construction workers need continuous skills upgrades

To succeed in the coming decades, construction workers will need continuous skills upgrades, according to a report by the Autodesk Foundation and Monitor Institute by Deloitte.

The research outlines a comprehensive framework for examining the skills gap challenge and specific opportunity areas for investment. “We need to understand the effects of technology adoption, how to mitigate the risks, and how to ensure that long-term incentives for success are aligned for all parties,” according to a news release.

The report highlights four key points about how to address the skills gap in U.S. construction and manufacturing:

— Training workers for new technical skills is important, but these skills can quickly become obsolete if they are not explicitly tied to more foundational and transferable capabilities

— The accelerating pace of technological change necessitates workers engage in continuous “skills upgrades,” requiring workers to imagine – and navigate – very different career pathways

— Continuous learning requires shortening the metaphorical distance between learning and work, which is most effective when learning is embedded into work and work into learning

— Closing the skills gap requires addressing a broader set of challenges facing workers: in the marketplace for jobs, at work, and in policies and practices that affect the broader “social determinants of work”

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.