Amid a skilled labour shortage and a population boom, Alberta’s construction industry is having to get creative to meet the ongoing demand for housing in the province, say some homebuilders.
From January to October, 37,969 new residential construction projects were started in Alberta, 34 per cent more than the previous year, according to Statistics Canada.
In October alone, Alberta recorded the second-highest level in housing starts compared to other provinces at 4,394 — numbers the province hasn’t seen in a decade.
But the growth comes in the context of what Alberta’s Independent Contractors and Businesses Association (ICBA) — one of largest construction associations in Canada — is describing as an “unsustainable labour shortage” in the province. The association says this could threaten the stability of homebuilding operations in the coming years.
In a new report, ICBA Alberta said the province will need at least 22,000 new workers to sustain the construction industry into the year 2033.
“Labour shortages are reaching a critical point and we need to rethink immigration and entry requirements,” said Mike Martens, president of ICBA Alberta, in a release.
“It is not a person’s education but the alignment of their skills with domestic economic needs that determines their contribution. Nowhere is this clearer than in Alberta’s construction labour market.”
Turning to new markets
Ryan Scott, CEO of Avalon Master Builder, a Calgary-based homebuilder, said it’s been difficult to keep pace with demand over the past three years.
“Our industry has a lot of peaks and valleys, and we’ve had a lot of aging out and not a lot of new people coming in. So it’s made it a challenge to deal with the demand of 100,000 people coming to the city in a [year’s] time.”
To cope, Scott said they’ve had to get creative.
Ryan Scott, CEO of Avalon Master Builder, a Calgary-based homebuilder, said the company has turned to markets outside of Alberta to fill the labour gap. (Tiphanie Roquette/CBC)
In addition to employing new software and upping automation, the company has also turned to constructing modular homes that capitalize on an available workforce elsewhere.
The different parts of the building are constructed in Manitoba, said Scott, and then shipped to Calgary, where the pieces are put together using a crane.
“Manitoba’s labour market is completely different from ours. They have people ready to work and available to work,” said Scott.
The savings on labour don’t quite offset the costs of transporting the prefabricated homes or the heavy machinery needed for assembly just yet, Scott added.
And although they’re more expensive, they come together much quicker — the process of putting a modular home together once it’s on site is about two months, whereas traditional homebuilding takes about 10 months to complete.
“We still build a number of stick-frame homes … that’s really what we’re trying to figure out is how do we add that incremental amount when the market is as hot as it is today,” said Scott.
The role of AI
Artificial intelligence has also come into play for manufacturers trying to improve their productivity.
It’s a tool the City of Edmonton is testing to speed up inspections and permit publications, said Travis Pawlyk, manager of the development services department.
Since September, Pawlyk said the city has issued permits for simple residential constructions automatically, with 10 per cent being monitored to detect any errors.
It means a process that used to take up to two weeks can now be done in a day.
“It frees up capacity and helps with those crunch times,” he said.
“This is going to either be the second most or the biggest year on record.… We’re looking at 60 per cent more permits for housing than last year.”
In the same vein as Calgary, new zoning bylaws came into effect in Edmonton at the start of this year, allowing more units to be built on standard residential lots.
Saheb Dullet, the senior director of policy and government relations at BILD Alberta, a construction association, said he thinks the construction industry has done well to find innovative ways to get around the lack of available labour.
“[They’ve] done really well in terms of just tapping into a wider skilled labour pool — whether that’s international migration, if it’s temporary foreign workers, if it’s Albertans, Canadians across the country — they’ve done a really good job in terms of just finding the right people for the right skill sets.”
In its report, the ICBA said the federal government has to do more to prioritize the construction trades, finding that only two per cent of all permanent immigrants pursue a career in construction.
“Canada is adding the equivalent of a city the size of Calgary annually, yet we are not attracting or equipping newcomers with the tools to succeed in sectors like construction where they are desperately needed,” said Martens.
“The federal government must adopt smarter immigration policies that prioritize construction-relevant skills and provide faster pathways to integrate new workers into the industry.”