Put the Data to Work
There is a set of choices you can make with data tracking connected to campus construction. You can start with any requirements your city or municipality requires, but you can select additional data points that inform your institution’s own local inclusion strategy. Most cities have legislated minimum data tracking requirements but you can opt to do more. /p>
Track performance chronologically
Your data gathering process should start with the historical context. Your planning, design, and construction office as well as the city should have records for diversity participation in past campus construction projects. Use this data to review and understand past patterns of inclusion successes and failures and to identify opportunities to improve performance.
Centralize and simplify
Ask general contractors on all of your construction projects to collect, track, and report on the same data points across all construction projects, both organization-owned and third-party projects. When data on all projects is compiled in the same way it better enables analysis and troubleshooting.
Include metrics like:
- Local and minority labor participation
- Local and minority supplier participation
- Local and minority subcontractor participation
- Track both apprentice and journeyman labor participation
Where labor data is concerned, require your general contractors on projects to track local and diversity participation at both the apprentice and journeyman levels. This will help you gain an understanding of whether and how effectively the trades are diversifying, and whether you can expect to see more journeymen of color working on your projects in years to come.
A diverse pool of journeyman union labor must be preceded by diversity at the apprenticeship level. A diverse pool of apprentice union members indicates a workforce that is becoming more inclusive, and it is your most important labor participation metric because it indicates what the state of the labor pool will be in the near future.
In the union apprentice system, the contractor sponsors jobs and the unions open apprentice slots accordingly to fill the need. When there are few or no apprentice jobs sponsored in a construction project, apprentices cannot get the hours they need to complete their journeyman qualifications, limiting future opportunities for work. As such, this is a leverage point for the institution to use with the general contractor: you can push or require your contractor to sponsor additional apprentice slots for minority and women candidates, thus advancing the diversification of this workforce.