By Nick Cotumaccio
No two projects are completely alike. This is especially true for rural healthcare projects because the reasons behind building a new hospital or expanding an existing facility are personal to the needs of the community that healthcare system serves. While the project scopes and specifics differ, I have found that many of our healthcare clients want to support their local communities and keep as much of the construction dollars spent close to home as possible. That’s why local participation is usually at the top of our client’s list when we sit down with them early to define what success looks like on their project.
Hiring locally is our preference as well on rural hospital projects, but often easier said than done. In today’s economy, qualified trade partners are in high demand and very busy. Often there is a shortage of qualified trade partners in rural areas for largescale projects. This challenge is one our healthcare experts have a proven history of finding solutions for and making an impact not just in the local economy but in the local support of our clients’ projects. Here are 3 ways we’ve been able to boost local participation in rural healthcare projects while ensuring the projects are staffed with enough skilled manpower to deliver on time.
1. Getting the Word Out Locally
Our healthcare experts work hard to cultivate and maintain relationships with local trades so whenever we are awarded a project, we know who the players are and their capacities. From there, our preconstruction team hosts job fairs in the community and invite local trades to tell them details about the project and communicate schedule, expectation, and timing. These events give us an opportunity to not only explain what we’re looking for but find out if there’s any gaps or challenges the local trades have that we can help with.
2. Get Personal
It’s not enough to just get an introduction with local trades at job fairs, our teams go the extra mile to meet them where they are. Our preconstruction teams often go to local trades’ home offices to meet with them in person. There, we can gain a deeper understanding of their capabilities and discuss our strategies to help them bid on the project and hopefully participate.
3. Build Up Smaller Trades
Between the job fairs and home office meetings, our teams are able to identify the strongest candidates who can meet the expectations and deliver the time, skill, and manpower needed. It also gives us an opportunity to identify the smaller trades who are embedded in the community but might need some support to take the project on. We work to learn their capabilities and then can create smaller bid packages that are more tailored to their capacity and resources. Another option is to create a partnership between the company and a larger trade so they can still participate in the project without being overloaded.
Using these strategies, we were recently able to achieve more than 50% local participation while building the Northeast Georgia Rehabilitation Institute. That’s a number we’re proud of, and also a sign that these efforts can make an significant impact when hiring rural healthcare projects. When more than half of your project team is from the local area, the energy and commitment to the project is palpable. We understand keeping construction dollars in the area where the project is being built is not only important to our clients, but to the communities they serve. And delivering on our clients’ top priorities is how we define success on every project.
Learn more about project construction here.
