What Does Being A Part of AGCVA Mean To You?

What does being a part of AGCVA mean to you? For me, it’s being part of a long legacy in a five-generation family business and seeing how our history is intertwined with AGCVA’s history and the construction industry in Virginia. It’s being part of carrying things forward to the next generation. It’s watching so many kids who came to the Annual Convention year after year, watching them grow, and knowing that their parents and grandparents were once those same kids in AGCVA.

VIDEO: Miljan Gutovic, CEO at Holcim, discusses the firm’s half-year results and the geographies in which Holcim is seeing growth.

CNBC

Within the construction sector, robotics happens to be recognized as an extraordinary innovation due to its ability to surge efficiency as well as occupational safety. A fast-expanding body in terms of robotics in construction – RiC has gone on to generate recommendations when it comes to autonomous construction machinery. Due to the distinct features of construction process, like a tightly controlled operational setting as well as a reduced degree of standardization, the adoption of automation within the construction industry goes on to face many obstacles. The fact is that today, the RiC has gone on to evolve into a very highly interdisciplinary scientific discipline that blends robotics with many pressing technologies like additive manufacturing, building information modelling – BIM as well as machine learning.

World Construction Today

With the addition of two new federal bid protests, AGC of America is aware that four AGC-member construction firms have now filed federal bid protests objecting to project solicitations that require a project labor agreement (PLA). All four protests have led the government to voluntarily suspend the contract awards for the procurements while the protests are still pending. As reported recently in this article, the protests utilize a legal theory that AGC of America helped create with outside counsel at Fox Rothschild. All four protests are pending before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. 

AGC of America neither supports nor opposes contractors’ voluntary use of PLAs on government projects or elsewhere but strongly opposes any government mandate for contractors’ use of PLAs. AGC is committed to free and open competition for publicly funded work. AGC has long maintained that the federal government should not mandate PLAs. Government mandates for PLAs hurt both union contractors and open-shop contractors, and fail to promote economy and efficiency in federal procurement. According to an AGC analysis, the Department of Defense federal construction agencies – which perform the lion’s share of federal construction – rejected PLA mandates 99.4 percent of the time even when encouraged to do so under the Obama Administration. Click below to find more information on AGC-provided information on PLAs.

AGC

The construction industry is plagued by fraud, ranking in the top five median losses by industry, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. In 2024, the same ACFE report indicated that the median loss for the construction industry was $250,000, and the median duration of a fraudulent scheme (i.e. the amount of time a fraud was committed before being detected) was 12 months, with the most common types of fraud in the U.S. construction industry being billing schemes, corruption, expense reimbursements and non-cash misappropriation. Such fraud can take many forms – bid rigging, inflated invoices, falsified documents, defective materials and bribery – leading to cost overruns, delays, quality issues, safety hazards, legal disputes and other serious consequences for project owners, contractors, suppliers and the public.

Detecting and preventing fraud is a vital part of any construction project, but it is also a challenging one, as fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated and elusive, and traditional fraud detection methods, which rely on manual audits, random checks and whistleblowers, are often insufficient. This is where generative AI can make a difference.

Construction Executive CE

Construction employment increased in 39 states in July from a year earlier, while 29 states and the District of Columbia added construction jobs between June and July, according to a new analysis of federal employment data released by the Associated General Contractors of America today. Association officials noted that demand for projects—and the workers to execute them—remains robust in most states but there is a pressing new to prepare more people for careers in construction.

“Construction employment gains remain widespread, thanks to steady or increasing demand for data centers, manufacturing plants, energy and infrastructure projects,” said Ken Simonson, the association’s chief economist. “But further job growth may be hindered by a lack of training programs for construction careers.”

AGC

The construction industry is rapidly evolving, with skilled-labor shortages being a large pain point for companies across the United States. As the demand for construction and engineering projects continues to rise, qualified skilled trades workers are becoming fewer and farther between. According to a 2024 study conducted by Associated Builders and Contractors, the industry needs an additional 501,000 workers to meet market demand. Another survey conducted by Associated General Contractors noted that 85% of construction firms report they have open positions they are actively trying to fill. 

Construction Executive CE

OSHA’s new employee walkaround rule has raised a lot of questions. The final rule went into effect on May 31, allowing employees to select a third-party representative to be present during OSHA inspections. The agency has touted the change as a way to improve inspections by increasing worker representation and making it easier for compliance officers to obtain more information about workplace safety.

Construction Dive

Organizations are constantly sending both implicit and explicit messages to employees. Sometimes, those messages are conflicting or ambiguous, making it difficult for workers to truly understand whether the communication is authentic. Employees are challenged with deciphering messages that are unclear and often find it difficult to trust that the organization really cares about their mental health and well-being. Unfortunately, this is common with organizational communication. There are several layers that further contribute to the reluctance to trust and listen to the messages from their organization (e.g., organizational politics, a lack of trust, stigma, and fear) – adding additional barriers to support seeking and resource utilization.

Youturn Health