An off-balance industry
The scaffolding industry has too many new companies, and too few skilled workers. Julie Iles reports.
New earthquake prone building legislation has created a ‘‘gold rush’’ mentality in the minds of new scaffolding company owners.
That’s according to Scaffolding, Access and Rigging New Zealand president Graham Burke, who says brand new companies are flocking to the capital to capitalise on the quake rules, but their approach was hurting established businesses.
Burke said the new companies were ’’poaching’’ scaffold workers with industry experience, and their replacements took 3 to 4 years to train to the same standard.
Importing more workers from overseas and allowing skilled scaffold workers to stay longer would help, he said.
According to the Companies Office, four new Wellington scaffolding companies have been incorporated so far this year.
Nationally, there are 56 newly incorporated companies with names that include the word ‘‘scaffold’’ or ‘‘scaffolding’’.
John Michaels, a residential scaffold worker for Cougar Scaffolding, a Wellington company, said he has noticed a lot of new companies popping up.
Michaels said new companies have approached his co-workers with job offers.
‘‘These guys that are starting up have a lot of money, they see there’s a niche market with all the new builds going on .... and they buy the flash trucks and the new gear, the only issue that New Zealand has is lack of skilled tradesmen, and they find that out later.’’
He said he has stayed put because his wages were high, and he liked working on more residential jobs.
The explosion of new companies and shortage of workers was slowing down the pace of construction projects and making it harder to meet tight deadlines under new earthquake prone building legislation, Burke said.
One of the tightest deadlines for commercial building owners is the requirement that unreinforced masonry buildings be secured by March 2018.
With seismic risk levels would be above normal in the lower North and upper South Island for the next three years, the Government has announced 300 high-risk buildings in the Wellington region would need to be brought up to code in the next 12 months.
The list was later slimmed to 104 buildings in a revised list that Wellington City Council made public in May. Twenty-three buildings were identified on Cuba Street identified and 13 on Riddiford Street in Newtown.
Duncan Cotterril partner Paul Calder said if these building owners did not complete works by the deadline it would land them with a maximum $200,000 fine.
The Government has set aside $3 million and Wellington and Lower Hutt councils have added another $1.5m to the fund for the necessary repairs.
The joint fund will be used to provide a 50 per cent subsidy for work, up to a maximum grant of $15,000 for a fac¸ade and $10,000 for a parapet.
Structural engineers referred by the Wellington City Council website for masonry repairs have received no more than 10 enquiries from affected building owners, a sign the true demand for scaffold workers on these repairs is yet to hit the market.
Wellington Capital Construction director Brent Wicken, said the deadline for masonry repairs was ‘‘unrealistic’’ and a shortage of structural engineers stood in the way of construction getting started.