Learn About one Solution to the Roofing Industry Labor Shortage and Earn an AIA/CES HSW Learning Unit at the Same Time 

The skilled labor shortage is affecting roof construction timetables and quality of installations

In a perfect world, the architect designs a building and the contractor builds it, accurately and on time, with all the skilled labor necessary. In the real world, the supply of skilled construction labor ebbs and flows. Today it has ebbed. The scarcity of skilled labor drives up costs and drives down quality as crews rush from project to project in a quickening market.

Duro-Last recently published a ten-page study about how skilled labor shortages are affecting construction timetables and quality, with a focus on the roofing industry, and how a solution that architects can specify—factory-controlled, prefabricated membrane roofing systems that install onsite in a fraction of the time and with fewer workers—is helping to solve the problem.

In the roofing industry, labor shortages rank as a top concern for contractors. According to the most recent State of the Industry Report from Roofing Contractor magazine, business is good but labor shortages are tempering the growth.

“The past recession has put us in a tough spot. We lost a generation or more of trained workers in our industry,” Kent Schwickert, senior vice president, national business unit - Tecta America Corp., tells the magazine.

“An extreme labor shortage is going to impact the entire country, in my opinion. This is going to drive up wages and make competition for experienced roofers fierce,” says Scott Baxter, a commercial sales manager for Interstate Roofing Inc. in Portland, Oregon, in an interview with the magazine.

One solution noted in the report is factory-made roofing systems to minimize labor needed in the field.

To learn more about the labor challenges and solutions to address the shortage, download the Duro-Last white paper today.