PASSING THE TORCH TO NEW LEADERSHIP

Where is the construction industry headed in the next 5, 10, 20 years and beyond? It’s always important to keep the future of our industry in mind as we continue about our day-to-day work to develop initiatives that make our association stronger. This was also a major topic during the 2022 Partners in Progress Conference that took place in March.

Many SMACNA Greater Chicago executive leaders and board of directors attended the conference with our labor counterparts from Local 265 and Local 73. The amount of great content delivered during the sessions never fails to amaze me, and I’m always left wondering the best way to bring that energy back home.

One piece of information that stuck with me was when we learned there’s more market share across the country in areas that have better working relationships between labor and management. It makes sense. While our chapter is fortunate to have great relationships with our locals, as always there’s more that can be done. Even if we try to improve 1% every day on our communication, on our employees, on our training processes —imagine how much better and more efficient we could all be on the jobsite and in the office.

In addition to better connections between labor and management, the conference also discussed understanding and improving the generational divide and what we, as an industry, should do to recruit and retain future talent. This has always been the dilemma. I’m hopeful that my tenure as president will see us working together to find solutions to these common challenges.

As we continue to work on our own goals, I wanted to take a moment to thank immediate past president Joe Passannante for helping our association weather the storm of the pandemic these past few years. His calm leadership kept the energy flowing and focused on the importance of continuing education, training and safety.

As we enter into the spring and summer months, I look forward to connecting with more SMACNA Greater Chicago members during the exciting events we have planned. See page 24 for more details!

Hank Artlip
President, SMACNA Greater Chicago