One of the construction industries best know characters (if you are under 5) Bob the Builder, is front and centre of the efforts to save the world’s economy.
Bob the Builder
As a start, his construction team’s cry of ‘YES WE CAN’ has been central to the Barak Obama election campaign. But this is only the beginning.
Obama in the USA, Kevin Rudd in Australia and a range of other governments are now asking the whole of the construction industry Bob’s key question “Can we fix it?” Hopefully the answer is ‘YES WE CAN’. The amount of money being directed to construction projects to provide stimulus to the economy is enormous and will require a major response if the funds are to be well spent. As an industry we need to provide value and quality for the money being invested.
This opens up a two of interesting challenges:
- How are we going to meet the current short term demand for professional constructors? Possibly by attracting with people with project management, administration and scheduling people from the depressed IT industry – project management is supposed to be a portable discipline.
- How are we going to meet the looming long term skills shortage? Maybe one way to attract talent would be for the construction industry to set up a ‘Bob the Builder’ fund to ensure every child under 5 has access to this wonderful range of toys. After all as the old adage goes “The only difference between men and boys is the size of their shoes and the price of their toys” how hard will it be to persuade a young graduate it is nearly as much fun directing the operations of a back hoe, JCB or equivalent as playing with Scoop or Muck??
Bob and Friends
There are some interesting challenges ahead and Bob the Builder may not be able to fix everything but for the rest of us in the construction industry we have our work cut out.
Can we do it? I certainly hope we can!
Note: Bob the Builder is a copyright brand owned by HIT Entertainment Limited
Pat Weaver
Lynda Bourne
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