https://doi.org/10.24928/2022/0209

Capacity Building: Learning From Corporate Successes Outside Construction

Alan Mossman¹ & Shobha Ramalingam²

Abstract

Industrialization is a response to low productivity and shortage of skilled labour. Advancement in technology is associated with the growing trend. Thus, industrialisation requires upskilling the whole workforce – literacy, numeracy, technical and trade skills. This crisis is exacerbated by the casualization of construction labor over the last ~60 years which means construction companies do not see it as in their interest to upskill those they do not employ. Even though “with every pair of hands comes a free brain” (Henry Ford), the construction sector seems to find it acceptable to do little or nothing to use and develop those brains, to tap into this unused talent. Motivated by these insights, we ask, what can we learn from corporate success outside construction that might help improve industrialised project delivery in construction? This qualitative exploratory analysis of successful major transformations in other sectors uses selective literature review, categorical aggregation of case studies and inductive reasoning. The findings underscore the importance of leaders with ‘constancy of purpose’ driving system change in order to build the capacity and competence of workers. In construction this may mean decasualising labour which will require the creation of pipelines of work to ensure a steady workload. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research and validation in the field.

Keywords

Organization, Culture, Industrialisation, Collaboration, Capacity building.

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Reference

Mossman, A. & Ramalingam, S. 2022. Capacity Building: Learning From Corporate Successes Outside Construction, Proc. 30th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC) , 996-1007. doi.org/10.24928/2022/0209

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