July 4, 2007

Skilled Labour

Construction Sector Council launches online planning tool

Custom labour market info at your fingertips

TERRY TINKESS

CORRESPONDENT

Ottawa

Knowledge is power, and thanks to a new online planning tool, owners and buyers of construction services in Canada will have the ability to access the best labour market information available with the click of a mouse.

“It’s going to be a fantastic tool,” says George Gritziotis, executive director of the Construction Sector Council (CSC.)

“We’re very excited about this and want to make sure everyone in the industry knows about it,” he told attendees at CSC- sponsored National Owners’ forum in Ottawa.

“At our first owners’ meeting we presented what was going on around the world with tools that were being used to plan,” says Gritziotis.

“The Australians had developed a similar model to help plan. It was an interactive site, and at the time I announced to the owners that if they gave us a couple years, we would develop a Canadian version. That is what we are doing today.”

The CSC model, according to Gritziotis, is a step above The Australian model. The Canadian model is at an individual trade level, and going forward will be available to the residential sector as well.

“When you start playing with it, you’re going to see a lot of planning opportunities,” says Gritziotis.

Bill Empey, an economist with CSC, says it’s a matter of getting the information to the people who can, and will, use it. The Construction Forecast website will be as good as it’s users make it.

“We want you to look at it, we want you to kick it around, we want feedback,” says Empey. “That’s how this system grows. It will be released officially (this) week, and we’ll continue adding new data to it on an ongoing basis.”

There are approximately 5,000 variables in the model, which will be accessed by a web-link on the main CSC web site (www.csc-ca.org).

Information in the database is gathered from Statistics Canada as well as from labour market reports from across Canada. As the system is used and new “real world” data is added, results will be accurate and indicative of the actual construction environment that exists. Information such as new projects, start and completion dates, number of workers required, and specific trades utilized will all add toward the value of the information that will be available. The more projects entered, the more accurate the forecasts.

Information can be obtained in two ways; through “quick-picks,” which provides information that many people would be looking for, such as housing starts or engineering investments by region, or as a customized query, which can be modified to provide specific details.

The response to a query is gathered from a master database and can be exported in spreadsheet form, to be manipulated to suit individual needs.

“We’re trying to develop a site that basically offers, for lack of a better description, one-stop shopping,” says Empey. “When you have your construction needs and are looking for information, come here, and if it’s available, you’ll be able to find it here.”

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