Skilled workers key to the success of any construction project

Ms Lillian Ashioya could not hide her joy when she was presented with a certificate after successfully completing a one-month course in masonry.

“I want to thank everyone who has taken part in my training. You all know how hard it is to get a job nowadays without skills, and this has made many youths suffer. I now have skills,” said Ms Ashioya, addressing fellow graduates and guests at the graduation ceremony held in a tent on the grounds of Garden City shopping mall on the outskirts of Nairobi last Friday (February 24), amid loud cheers from her classmates.

Before the training, Ms Ashioya, who is married with three children, had taken up several menial jobs at construction sites around Ruaraka on the outskirts of Nairobi before landing a cleaning job at Garden City shopping mall.

“I am delighted that I will now be able to not only mop floors of buildings, but also participate in their construction with my newly acquired skills,” said an elated Ms Ashioya, who graduated with a masonry level one qualification.

A total of 130 students from underprivileged backgrounds selected with the help of community-based organisations in the surrounding area graduated during the event, touted as the first ever graduation ceremony to take place in a shopping mall.

The free training was facilitated through a partnership between Actis, the developer behind Nairobi’s landmark shopping complexes Garden City and The Junction, and ArcSkills, an international skills development institution. The programme is in its sixth month and aims to equip about 300 youths with skills in masonry, carpentry formwork, plumbing, tiling, scaffolding and plastering within a year.

While regulatory bodies such as the National Construction Authority have standards to ensure that only qualified and registered professionals such as architects, engineers and contractors take part in construction, little attention is given to middle-level workers and artisans like Ms Ashioya, who constitute the bulk of the workforce in the construction industry.

Indeed, the conventional way of hiring such workers at construction sites around the country is based solely on what impression the foreman has of a person’s capabilities. So what happens is that a group of job-seeking young men and women present themselves at a construction site in the morning, and the foreman decides, usually on the basis of a person’s physical build, who among them will join his or her team for the day.

TIME, QUALITY, COST

Ms Shami Nissan, head of responsible investment at Actis, noted that this lack of skills among the lower cadres of workers is to blame for problems dogging the construction industry, such as structurally unsound buildings, which end up collapsing.

“We feel the pinch when that happens,” she said. “We have been investors in real estate for eight years now in Kenya. We would like to improve the quality of workers’ skills, which will translate to quality work in the industry.”

Ms Nissan said that training leads to quality workmanship, which means fewer lives are likely to be lost as a result of buildings collapsing.

“But less extreme than loss of life, due to poor workmanship, developers are rebuilding over and over again as a result of shoddy work. It costs more money to do that,” she added. 

Besides, Ms Nissan believes that there is a strong commercial case that should compel construction companies to consider incorporating an artisans’ training programme, not just as a corporate-social responsibility, but for the benefit of the company as well. as the

“If you are a construction company, you will have every day at your gate a long queue of people looking for work. And they will not be skilled. If you have a programme like this on your side, you will have world-class quality training of personnel with certificates, which gives you a long list of qualified artisans to choose from, instead of those waiting at the gate with no skills. So it gives you a pool of people for your site who have more skills and are more qualified, which means you can build better quality buildings in good time and save money,” Ms Nissan offered. 

Meanwhile, speaking to DN2 after the graduation ceremony, Mr Peter Kimurwa, the chief executive officer of ArcSkills, said the success of a project depends on three things: time, quality and cost.

He went on to explain that, as a developer or a contractor, when you are working with untrained artisans, you have very little control of these three critical elements.

He added that that that is why training is important because it imparts skills and positive behaviour. For instance, when artisans are conversant with their roles on the construction site, they need minimal supervision but will do a substantial amount of work.

So, since training equips artisans with the requisite work ethics, the contractor will not have to worry about workers reporting to work late, materials disappearing from the site, or workers skipping work after being paid, something Mr Kimurwa said was common among casual labourers.

Then there is the issue of certification.

“When you train people and certify them, you provide a means of benchmarking. So, if you have 10 workers who hold, say Level One certificates, you know beforehand what to expect from each one of them in terms of output. Without training, it is a herculean task assessing them,” Mr Kimurwa added.

But certification is a double-edged sword for, besides enabling the employer to assess a worker’s output, the certification  gives the employee the right to demand a certain wage.

“If you don’t have any papers, your employer can decide you are worth Sh100 a day but with standardised training and certification, one can argue a strong case for remuneration based on qualification,” Mr Kimurwa noted.

Citing the case of Ms Ashioya, now a cleaner-cum-mason, Mr Kimurwa pointed out that “training acts as a stepping stone for such underprivileged people to go up the social ladder to attain better socio-economic welfare”.

Another important aspect the training tackled had to do with the health and safety of workers and those neighbouring  a construction site.

Ms Nissan said that training creates awareness of how to be safe while working at a construction site, not just for the workers, but also for the surrounding community.

Mr Kimurwa concurred, adding that, “As a contractor, the last thing you want on your site is an accident, because that spells doom for your project in terms of time and cost since you might be required to compensate the injured worker.”

He, however, pointed out that there is only so much a contractor can do to ensure that the workers are safe.

“The contractor can provide a safe working environment, but it is upon the employee to wear safety gear such as a helmet, a dust mask or a reflector jacket,” he noted, adding that training helps create awareness of the importance of wearing safety gear and mitigates  the effects of accidents.

Besides ensuring safety is upheld at a construction site, training also helps break the language barrier between local workers and their foreign employers.

In this regard Mr Kimurwa cited as  examples some of the major construction projects going on in the country, which are being carried out by  European, Indian or Chinese contractors.

“The only way workers can take and execute orders precisely from supervisors or contractors who do not understand the local languages is by exhibiting good communication skills,” he said. 

For young people, the training programme could not have come at a better time, given that the country’s unemployment level is at an all-time high.

Encouraging young people to take up such training opportunities when they come along, Ms Nissan said, helps one to scale the ranks faster. She cites the case one of their former students as a case in point.

“The trainee, who started at the lowest level, has scaled the heights pretty fast and is now a foreman in the construction company that absorbed her,” said Ms Nissan.

During the  ceremony, local training institutions that offer technical and vocational education and training (TVET) programmes came in for some harsh criticism for what was perceived as their theoretical approach to training.

TRANSFORM INDUSTRY

“It is interesting to learn the chemical qualities of paints and the history of paints but that will not help you secure a job,” said Mr Kevin Doyle, a representative of The Permanent Working Group of TVET in Kenya.

Acknowledging that there is a lot of stigma associated with working as an artisan “since the education system and parents have prejudiced us to believe that only mainstream careers such as law or medicine can take us places”, Mr Doyle added: “We in the industry need to show that we value this level of training by paying these artisans a decent amount of money. That is the only way we will motivate more young people to seek the training.”

He added that if similar programmes were  adopted by all players in the property industry, it would not only solve the problems dogging the construction industry and equip youths with skills  they can use to earn a living, but  also be a partial solution to the worrying unemployment problem among the youth.

Mr Kimurwa concurred and went on  to add: “But we need to train the higher level employees as well. These include supervisors, managers, subcontractors, all the way to the contractor, to equip them with work ethics and help bring sobriety to the industry.” 

He said the reason buildings collapse is because contractors and workers cut corners to make some money on the side, knowing well that this compromises the integrity of the building. For instance, a the contractor might deliberately use low-gauge steel bars when they know they should be using high-gauge bars.

However, while training might help instill some ethics into such contractors, strict regulation, supervision  and control by government agencies  would go a long way in curbing such unscrupulous behaviour.

Mr Kimurwa said the students they admit  to their training programme undergo 70 per cent practical training and 30 per cent theory.

He added that the training went beyond matters directly related to construction to include life skills, so besides the core training say, in masonry or tiling, the learners are taught how to conduct themselves during interviews in order to maximize their chances of getting hired.  They arealso given lessons in punctuality, hygiene and personal grooming to help them cope once they are hired.

And particularly notable is that they are taught how to start saving and investing  as part of inculcating positive life skills in them.

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ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

Worker shortage slows down economic growth 

According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, the key drivers of the country’s gross domestic product are forecast to be services (finance and ICT) and construction.

Even though the output of the country’s construction industry has risen on average by 13 per cent annually since 2014, there is an estimated gap of about 30,000 engineers, 90,000 technician and 400,000 artisans, with the shortage of mid-level technician and artisans hampering the prospects for economic growth.

Mr Torbjorn Caesar, a senior partner at Actis, believes that the critical shortage of this calibre of personnel is to blame for slowed economic growth.

Speaking during the graduation ceremony of 130 artisans at Garden City Mall last week, Mr Caesar said there is a need to bridge that workforce gap if the country is to realise its full economic potential.