News Detail

Challenges for the 21st Century

7/1/1999

This spring, I represented ACI in a forum sponsored by McGraw-Hill and Engineering News-Record (ENR). The purpose was to gather predictions and impressions of construction leaders regarding 21st Century challenges to our industry, and how they can be met.

Approximately 60 individuals were divided into three groups, and for two hours we exchanged opinions and information from our respective segments of the industry. This was followed by a summary from each group in a general session. (One unanimous opinion: any kind of in-depth analysis would take much longer than two hours.) I offer a synopsis of their synopses for your reflection, as follows.

A major challenge emerging in one form or another from all three groups related to availability, training, and maintaining of workers. Mid-career is an especially difficult time for employers to inspire personnel, motivating them to remain. New workers’ expectations are that they will enter the workforce at a high salary level and accrue increases rapidly, not at the slower pace experienced by their predecessors. The mid-life worker is thus caught in an economic bind. On the positive side, however, younger workers appear to feel a greater sense of ownership than in the past, encouraging them to be more productive. This confluence is requiring a different set of skills for managers.

The issue of communications occupied much of our time. The Internet, which is driving change, provides opportunities for work centralization, but local politics will still require individual empowerment. Raise salaries, but also foster flexibility to change within the organization and business models. Companies will benefit from more pooling of technological information, rather than dissemination from the top down through the CEO’s office.

The perception of construction as low-tech, as well as fragmentation of the industry, were seen as barriers to acquisition of "the best and brightest" young workers. In the ever more competitive business world, construction must find a way to present itself as a high-tech, progressive industry offering a rosy future. One solution, offered only partially in jest: a construction-based TV show!

Reviewing ACI’s Strategic Plan and its rigorous implementation program, we can be assured that we not only are aware of these issues but are also addressing them in orderly fashion. ACI certification, as an excellent example, has fostered greater awareness of the necessity for well-trained personnel, and the means for providing them.

In the communications arena, many of our committees are working between conventions via e-mail and, in fact, all members of the Technical Activities Committee are online. Our resident expert, John Glumb, and his staff have seamlessly moved our website from Aberdeen Group management to a server of our choice. (Aberdeen, as you know, was merged into the Hanley-Wood Corp., and discontinued managing sites for others, including ACI.) Our new Marketing Committee is working diligently to ensure that others know of the many benefits we offer both members and the public. Our challenge, as ACI, is to continue to involve others in the effort to improve our product...and increase utilization of the knowledge that we already have.

Of course, most of us realize that construction is not low-tech. For example, concrete is not just three solids mixed with water; it is a complex, highly technical material designed and produced by highly qualified people. Our product can, in fact, become as high tech as we wish or can afford. It is regrettable that to the greater population "concrete" and "cement" are interchangeable terms, and concrete is "guaranteed" only to be gray, to crack, and not to be stolen. The public has developed a high tolerance, and indeed an expectation, for poor concrete. As an industry, we have few effective programs to mend this condition compared with, for example, the brick and steel industries.

A relatively unknown vehicle exists to coordinate efforts to advise the public of the benefits and beauties of good concrete— the CEOs of concrete-related associations, some 30 of them. Although this may sound like a new organization, it was actually started by George F. Leyh, retired Executive Vice President of ACI, more than 20 years ago. Every year, these CEOs meet to discuss the concrete industry and the major efforts of their respective organizations. The group devotes itself primarily to information exchange but ACI has recently proposed that the former become more productive with an explicit mission and the support of the entire industry. More on this later.

Obviously, the challenges of the future are the subject of much discussion among ACI staff, the Board, the Executive Committee, and the Strategic Plan Overview Committee (SPOC). Our new executive vice president, Jim Toscas, is especially attentive to these issues, and has already begun to streamline staff assignments in order to improve both our efficiency and our productivity. This will enable us to respond more quickly and fully to our members and to the needs of our industry, a worthy goal. To quote golfing great Jack Nicklaus: "Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one’s level of aspiration and expectation."

I am pleased to report that ACI is moving down that pathway.

Jo Coke
President
American Concrete Institute

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