Amid Boom, Construction Managers Become Scarce By SLAV KANDYBA Staff Reporter Construction companies throughout the Greater San Fernando Valley are in search of qualified top-level managers to oversee a growing number of projects throughout the region. But the area is scarce of qualified candidates. “We’re having difficulty finding good qualified people,” said Barry Becker, president of Woodland Hills-based Pacific West Builders, Inc. The company, founded in 1998, had five employees in 2000 but has since grown to 14 and is seeking to add two or three more by the end of this year. The shortage is partly due to a surge in construction projects, including at schools and universities, and partly because the candidates that are available do not have the requisite experience to be construction managers, company officials said. Also, the local colleges and universities are not producing enough construction graduates. California State University Northridge’s engineering department surveyed 300 companies in the tri-county region including Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara in January 2003. Out of those, 64 reported they’ll be looking to hire 500 construction managers over the next two years. The region is “producing only 70 per year,” said Stephen Gadomski, an engineering professor who directed the survey. According to Gadomski, a number of Valley companies were looking to hire construction managers, according to the information they provided in the survey. Because of the recognized need, CSUN this month announced it would launch the Construction Management Technology program within the engineering department. By definition, a construction manager’s job duties include taking a project from development stage to planning, and finally, to construction. “He’s in charge of the whole shop,” Gadomski said. “He can work either as a contractor or be employed by a company.” In addition to a construction boom, Gadomski said, companies are looking to fill full-time positions as opposed to hiring contractors because projects are getting “more complicated” and “more lawsuits have been filed.” The CSUN program will consist of a combination of classroom and hands-on instruction, featuring 2-hour lectures and 3-hour lab assignments. The program will debut this fall at the Port Hueneme Naval Base and will expanded to the CSUN campus in spring 2005. “Everything is building up all across the country,” said David Honda, president of Northridge-based D.S. Honda Construction, who serves on the CSUN engineering department’s advisory board. “Local graduates supply the local workforce.” Recruiting war Honda said some of the largest construction projects in the world, including those for the Los Angeles Unified School District, L.A. Community College District even projects to rebuild Iraq are handled by local companies. An all-out recruiting war then breaks out: “When companies get contracts, they start pirating from each other,” Honda said. “(Many) employees are being shipped all around and a lot of employees are being brought in from other states.” “There aren’t enough graduates,” said a vice president of a 10-employee construction firm in Glendale who wished to withhold her name. “We always have to wait for employees from the big businesses to not have an assignment.” The ideal candidate is familiar with government procedures and policies and can handle paperwork, she said. Many job applicants are inexperienced or only have engineering experience, which is not sufficient to manage construction. The construction manager’s job requires a great deal of technical expertise as well as communication skills. In an area such as Los Angeles, with a diverse population, that becomes especially important. “We deal with a gamut of different cultures,” Honda said, comparing a manager’s job to “herding cats” because of the various personnel the manager has to pull together on the same page. Rise in residential construction Honda said residential construction is increasing as well. “They actually need more bodies,” he said, adding that they have to be highly educated. “There are a lot of construction techniques, but to recognize and manage scheduling you really need to go back and study,” he said. It was Honda, who has been in the construction business since 1976, who originally suggested to a CSUN dean that the construction management training program was needed. He was well-received, and after several years the program was approved. “I helped put the advisory board together made up of CEOs and CFOs and with that the university system saw that the dean was able to get some credibility for the program,” Honda said. The program was modeled after similar programs at other colleges and universities of its kind, including at seven sister campuses of the Cal State University system. Pacific West Builders’ Becker said he wasn’t aware of other programs for training construction managers in the Valley. His company is projected to add two or three jobs by the end of this year or early 2005, he said. “Right now in the Southern California area there is a real emphasis on construction because of good interest rates and the availability of money,” Becker said.
