More on the difficulties of finding workers on BC’s Gulf Islands

Last week we had a post from Bill McCance about the serious labour shortages contractors run into when trying to build houses on BC’s Gulf Islands. As a general contractor, Bill uses prefabricated modules such as ICFs and SIPs to reduce labour time.

Here is another post about the Gulf Islands labour challenge, from Wolfgang Scheuer, Prostar Mechanical.

As a recently retired HVAC/mechanical contractor from Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, I wanted to agree that the construction industry is very busy in this region of the country and finding skilled labour is a problem. We have tried techs who came from Alberta. Unfortunately, they normally have the wrong skills (heavy industrial and welded-piping installs) and have limited knowledge of HVAC or even basic plumbing as their careers have been on the industrial pipefitting side of the industry. Also they are used to, and expect to make, top dollar but that also sets up a conflict as productivity is low and this business does not have big margins to allow for mistakes. So good luck to all you contractors in this area in trying to find labour. Maybe look south to the USA? There might find some folks looking to move North.