Chapter 41 — Further Reading

Twelve pointers. Leadership generates an enormous amount of writing and most of it is not about construction, so what follows is weighted heavily toward sources that are either (a) about this industry's workforce specifically or (b) primary and checkable. Where I am not certain of an exact title, edition, or section number, I describe the source instead of inventing a citation — and you should hold every author to that standard, including me.

A standing caution on numbers. Workforce demographics, injury rates, suicide and substance-use figures, and turnover statistics all move, and they depend heavily on how the industry and its occupations were defined. Go to the primary source and note the year, the definition, and the limitation. A statistic quoted secondhand in a textbook or a trade article is a statistic you cannot defend in a meeting.

The workforce, retention, and who is on your site

1. CPWR — The Center for Construction Research and Training. The national research center for construction safety and health, funded to study exactly the questions in this chapter. Its long-running data compilation on the construction workforce — demographics, employment, injuries, illnesses, and health outcomes — is the single best starting point for anything in §41.7 and §41.8. For: anybody who needs a defensible number about the craft workforce rather than a remembered one.

2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — the occupational injury and workforce series. The Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, and the household survey data on employment by occupation, age, sex, and ethnicity. This is where the "roughly one in five workplace fatalities" figure and the aging-workforce trend actually come from. For: the manager who has been asked to justify a workforce claim in front of an executive.

3. AGC of America and Associated Builders and Contractors — workforce development and craft training. AGC publishes an annual construction workforce survey covering hiring difficulty, which craft positions are hardest to fill, and what contractors are doing about it; both associations run substantial craft training and apprenticeship programs, AGC alongside the union joint apprenticeship system and ABC in the open-shop model. Read both, because the union and open-shop training models are genuinely different and this book covers work in each. For: anyone building a labor plan or a development pipeline.

4. NCCER — the National Center for Construction Education and Research. Standardized craft curricula and portable credentials, plus supervisory and project-management training tracks. The relevant thing for this chapter is §41.10.2: NCCER's competency model is what an office-side development program should look like and mostly does not. For: the superintendent or PM designing a development path they can actually write on one page.

5. NAWIC, Chicago Women in Trades, and NABTU's tradeswomen programming. The National Association of Women in Construction, the long-established Chicago-based tradeswomen training and advocacy organization, and the building trades' national tradeswomen conference and apprenticeship-readiness programs. These are where the barrier list in §41.7 comes from, stated by the people it applies to rather than inferred. For: the manager who wants the action list rather than the argument. See also Helmets to Hardhats for the veteran pipeline.

Safety, and the leadership behaviors inside it

6. OSHA — 29 CFR 1926, the recordkeeping rule, and the multi-employer worksite citation policy. Three different things worth reading for three different reasons. Part 1926 is the construction standard. The recordkeeping rule contains the anti-retaliation provisions behind §41.4's "reporting without punishment," and OSHA has issued guidance addressing incentive programs that discourage reporting. And OSHA's multi-employer worksite policy is the framework under which a general contractor can be cited as a controlling employer for hazards created by somebody else's crew — which is the enforcement counterpart to constraint 1 in §41.1. For: every project manager, and read the multi-employer policy before you decide how involved you are willing to be in a subcontractor's safety.

7. OSHA's recommended practices for safety and health programs, and ISO 45001. Two management-system frameworks, one voluntary and American, one international and certifiable. Both make the same structural argument this chapter makes — that safety is produced by a management system rather than by rules and reminders — and both give you a checklist against which to audit the site you are actually running. For: the manager moving from "we have a safety manual" to "we have a system."

8. NIOSH's construction program and the NORA Construction Sector Council. Federal occupational safety and health research aimed specifically at construction, including work on fatigue, hours, shift scheduling, and total worker health. This is the research base under §41.9. For: anyone who is about to sign a directive for nine weeks of six tens and wants to know what is known.

Health, mental health, and substance use

9. The Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention. An industry body formed specifically around suicide prevention in construction, producing employer-facing material: toolbox talks, posters, guidance on building the topic into orientation, and language for talking about it on a job site. If you are going to put this on your talk rotation — and you should — start here rather than writing your own. For: the superintendent or safety director who has decided to do something and needs the actual materials.

10. CDC and SAMHSA — the underlying data and the referral infrastructure. The CDC has published industry-level analyses of suicide, and SAMHSA is the federal agency for substance use and mental health services, operating a national helpline and publishing workplace-facing guidance. In the United States, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is reachable by call or text. Note the framing from §41.8: this is workplace management, not clinical practice, and a person in crisis should be connected to professional help immediately. Crisis resources differ by country — find and post yours, in the languages spoken on your site. For: everyone. Do exercise E1 while you are here.

11. Mental Health First Aid, from the National Council for Mental Wellbeing. A structured, widely delivered training course in recognizing and responding to signs of a mental health or substance use crisis as a layperson — which is exactly the boundary a superintendent is standing on. Several construction associations and building trades locals have run cohorts of it. For: the manager who wants the conversation in §41.8.2 to be something they have practiced rather than something they improvise.

The production system that leadership actually operates

12. The Lean Construction Institute — the Last Planner System. LCI's material on pull planning, the constraint log, weekly work planning, percent plan complete, and reasons for variance. Read it as a leadership text rather than a scheduling one: it is the most fully worked account anybody has produced of how commitments are made and kept between companies that do not report to each other, which is the central problem of this chapter. Pair it with the Construction Industry Institute's research on project team performance and integration if you want the more academic treatment. For: the manager who wants a mechanism rather than an attitude.

A closing note on the general leadership literature

There is a large, popular management and leadership literature, some of it good. I have deliberately not sent you to it, for one reason: almost all of it is written for a manager who hires, pays, promotes, and reviews their own team, and roughly 85% of the people on your site do not fall into that category. Read it if you like — but read it knowing that the central constraint of your job is one those books do not have, and translate everything before you use it. The specific version always beats the general one on a construction site, which is why this chapter's sources are mostly about this industry's people.