According to the article, "rising labor costs are the bulk of increased construction costs". Yet we are talking about cost increasing by hundreds of percent. The question the article does not really pose is: how much of that labor is actually necessary?
I am reminded of my summer internship installing a computer system in a sewage plant. One of my jobs was testing the connection of the computer system to sensors. I needed a guide to show me where the sensors were located, and then I needed to attach a multimeter to the wires while someone on the computer end sent a signal. So two people needed.
However, there were six of us: The guide. The guy who could open the sensor cover. The guy who could attach the clips to the wires. The guy who read the meter. The guy who made sure each person only did his part of the job. And me. 300% of the required labor, so 300% of the costs.
When I think about big projects I immediately think about the system of contractors. There is a dozen layer distance between buyer and the guy who delivers. And every layer wants the share. So having one screw installed costs a salary for one guy and profit for dozen other involved companies creating price explosion.
This is why here in Finland most large construction projects have in their contract with the main supplier/builder a limit on how many layers of sub contractors is allowed. This is 2 or 3 for most projects.
This makes communication chains much shorter which usually leads into better end result. Also when things go wrong finding who is at fault is easier and it is more likely to be some big company that actually has money/proper insurance to be able to take care of it instead of some 2 or 3 person company that caused a multimillion fuckup and thus they would just go bankrupt instead of paying.
This is normal in any slightly larger project, the company that wins the bid rarely has hundreds of people twiddling their thumbs waiting for the next contract to be won. Instead the contracting company goes out to find sub contractors who do have free labor.
This creates a chain where the main contractor goes out to find labor, they find someone who promises fifty engineers for a good price. This company doesn’t either have fifty engineers sitting idle. Maybe they have ten. So they go out to find forty engineers. Rinse and repeat until the price that’s offered is too low for anyone to accept, or they’ve found their allocation of engineers.
The only way to prevent this is for the original contracting company to hire all of the necessary staff themselves onto their staff, but this is slow and only works if the project is long enough so that you can entice people to switch jobs. All experienced engineers are already employed somewhere else.
I am reminded of my summer internship installing a computer system in a sewage plant. One of my jobs was testing the connection of the computer system to sensors. I needed a guide to show me where the sensors were located, and then I needed to attach a multimeter to the wires while someone on the computer end sent a signal. So two people needed.
However, there were six of us: The guide. The guy who could open the sensor cover. The guy who could attach the clips to the wires. The guy who read the meter. The guy who made sure each person only did his part of the job. And me. 300% of the required labor, so 300% of the costs.