It’s NOT Their Fault!

Whose Job Was It? Why Blaming Workers and Trade Partners Is Wrong

Here’s the deal. I want to talk about a pretty important topic, which is why our industry blames people, the workers and the trade partners, for its problems. This one comes from some things I heard and read recently that I allowed to affect me emotionally, and I want to say it plainly.

Short answer: Most construction problems are system problems, not people problems. Workers, foremen, and trade partners don’t control the schedule, the contract, the site setup, or the training. The general contractor and the owner do. So before you blame a trade, ask whose job it was to train them, set up the site, build the schedule, and write the contract.

Most of Our Problems Are System Problems

The more I do with social media and posts, the more critics and trolls I attract, and that is fairly normal. But I am understanding two key things that I am pretty concerned about.

The first is that most of our problems, if not all, are not people problems. They are system problems. I want to give a shout-out to Hal Macomber for teaching me about this. We have a major, major problem when it comes to the systems we use.

Takt planning is not just something I talk about. It is the system, from a scheduling standpoint, that wraps in all other systems from a project control standpoint. It is our escape path. It is our exit, our way out of this mess. We can dismiss it. We can take it casually. But until we take it seriously, we are not going to fix the industry.

What I Heard Recently

The second thing is that I heard so many people recently blame their trade partners and the workers in the workforce. I am not saying this in a critical way, but let me tell you what I heard.

I heard a comment that on a large job, the scheduler is the most important person on the project. I also heard that the problem is not the system and not the schedule. The problem is the trade partners, the workers, and the foremen who just do not care, who are not good enough and not doing a good enough job. And I heard this comment: I will replace every trade, every worker, every foreman, every person on the project, but I will not replace the senior scheduler, because that is the most important position.

With every fiber of my body, I disagree. If you have a senior scheduler who knows the plan, and only he knows the plan, I have no respect for that whatsoever. The idea that foremen and trade partners are expendable feeds into the abusive general contractor mindset we have in the United States, and I am not happy about it at all.

Someone also commented on one of my LinkedIn posts, where I was talking about blaming the process and not the people, that workers are just bad and that it is their fault and their problem. This has to stop.

Blaming Them Is Wrong

In our industry, we think the problem is the workers, the trades, and the foremen. We think it is our trade partners. That thought will never serve us. It puts us as victims, and it will not trigger action. So I am categorically saying that any time somebody blames our industry’s problems on the workers, the foremen, or their trade partners, that is wrong. It is morally and ethically wrong, and it lacks perspective.

Think of a Family Member

Let me ask you something. Imagine a family member of yours, your brother, your sister, your mom, your grandma, is in a relationship where the other person always wants as much as they possibly can from them, and always takes. No matter what your family member does, the partner complains about it, then sets up situations that are impossible to overcome, and then blames your family member. For example, the partner does not provide a car, and then asks, why don’t we have a good dinner? Your family member says, I do not even have a car to get to the store.

Then there is punishment when the partner does not get what they want. Your family member has to go without money, without food, without communication, or is kicked out. Finally they leave, and they get into a new relationship, and it happens again, and again, over and over.

Then one day your family member comes to your place and says, I need to stay with you for a while. And they are traumatized, frazzled, snappy. Would you say to them, why would you act like that, you are inhuman, you are the problem? Would you say that to a beloved family member after abuse after abuse? Injured people injure people. Would you be that unforgiving, that unkind?

This is not exactly analogous to what I am talking about, but here is the connection. Every single person who comes onto your job has been yelled at, blamed, threatened with not being paid, treated in a dirty manner, lied to, and forced into unhealthy circumstances, over and over and over again.

What I Honestly Feel

I am a consultant in the construction industry, and I do this to pay for the training we give and the social media content we provide. I am a former general contractor. I was you. And I will be honest with you. I find it very hard to work with general contractors who treat people this way. If I, as an industry-respected consultant, whom superintendents are happy to have on their job, feel that way, what do you think the foreman and the worker at a trade partner feel when you do not even take the time to talk to them?

We have a deep problem in this industry, and it is not our trade partners. You may be thinking, but what about this, what about that. You do not even have a schedule where they can win. I am telling you for a fact that your jobs are getting completed on time in spite of the systems, and in spite of the lack of teaming. Your trades show up, do their best, and overcome this nightmare with effort, and without them, you are nowhere. And it was not their fault in the first place. It is the systems.

How can they survive with bad contracts that lock them in? How can they survive with a CPM schedule that does not create flow and counteracts every single aspect of it? How can they survive when you make them pay for your mistakes, like late procurement, or getting the job started late because of design? I could go on, and you understand exactly what I am saying.

Whose Job Was It?

I do not want to rant too long, so let me close with some questions, and the answers.

• It was our job to train the workers.
• It was our job to train the foremen.
• It was our job to treat the trade partners properly.
• It was our job to set up a clean and organized site that somebody could work on.
• It was our job to have a proper schedule that did not counteract productivity.
• It was our job to get a contract they could actually work with.
• It was our job to help these smaller companies succeed.

It was ours. It was the general contractor’s job, and it was the industry leaders’ job. No one else is going to do it. It was the big companies sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars of cash. We could have been doing training programs. We could have helped technical schools and trade schools. We could have been developing the workforce and starting training programs on the project site.

And if you say it was the trade partner’s job to do it, great. Now how about instead of burning them with paperwork and trade stacking their crews, we let them have the time to train their people?

What Has to Happen

To the trade partners, I will say this. You have to train your people, and you have to do two, three, or four times as much. But this is not going to end until the following happens.

• Owners stop doing design-bid-build work, stop ramming schedules down the contractor’s throat, and start treating people right.
• Contractors actually learn their job. Very few contractors know what they are doing. Everyone knows how to write an RFI, a submittal, and a subcontractor pay application. You need to learn how to schedule, how to create an environment of safety on your project, and how to create an environment where your trade partners and everyone on the project can do their job and make money.
• After those two are done, the trade partners will have the time to develop the workforce we need.

Where Are the Parents?

It is like going into somebody’s home and looking at their five-year old and saying it is the child’s fault. What about the parents? Who was supervising the situation? Who is providing the environment? Who is overseeing the culture of the home? You would never go into a house, see a five-, six-, or seven-year-old behaving badly, and blame the child. You would ask where the parents are.

Trade partners, foremen, and workers are not children, so please do not get after me for that analogy. But we have created a tier of hierarchy that is similar to parent and child. Workers, foremen, and trade partners have zero control of the system or the project site. They deal with multiple people and have to react to schedules, trade stacking, and rushes, and then you expect them to fix the system, and to fix the industry. If the general contractor is not creating the schedule, the system, the environment, the training, and the standards, who is? If the owners purchasing buildings are not requiring this from their people, who is? You are expecting the children in the family to restructure the culture, and they do not even have the authority.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

So here is the challenge. The next time you hear someone blame the workers, the foremen, or the trade partners, ask the question. Whose job was it to train them, to set up the site, to build the schedule, and to write the contract?

Bottom line: It was our job. It was the general contractor’s job.

On we go.

FAQ

Why does Jason say most construction problems are system problems and not people problems?

Because the training, schedule, contract, site setup, and standards are all created by the general contractor and the owner, not by workers, foremen, or trade partners. People cannot fix a system they have no authority over.

What does he mean by “injured people injure people”?

He uses the analogy of a family member coming out of a series of abusive relationships. You would not blame them for being snappy, and in the same way, workers who have been blamed, yelled at, and lied to over and over arrive on a job already carrying that.

What three things does he say have to happen?

Owners must stop ramming schedules down contractors’ throats and start treating people right. Contractors must learn their job, including scheduling and creating an environment of safety and profitability for trade partners. Then trade partners will have the time to develop the workforce.

What is the parent and child analogy?

You would never blame a five-year-old for bad behavior without asking where the parents are. Workers and trade partners have no control of the system, so blaming them for the industry’s problems is like expecting children to restructure a family’s culture.

People Also Read:

Respect for People, Nature & Resources
We Don’t Blame People
Build the System – Support the People!
We Must Fix the Systems First

Want your team trained on this? See our Last Planner System and Takt training.