July 30, 2012

PCL's industrial staff is growing at a rapid pace

RICHARD GILBERT

staff writer

The industrial and commercial divisions of PCL are hiring new employees at a rapid pace, while launching a new recruitment campaign to attract skilled tradespeople and staff in a competitive construction labour market.

“One of our most important corporate objectives is to address the backlog of work and opportunities across Canada by trying our best to man projects and meet the needs of our clients,” said Mike Olsson, who is PCL’s regional manager for Canadian Industrial.

“We are in a great situation, because we have work and we need people.”

PCL has more than 950 projects underway across Canada with an extensive backlog of work that continues to grow.

As a result of these emerging opportunities, PCL is experiencing a growing demand for labour in all areas of the company.

“In our Alberta and Saskatchewan markets related to industrial work such as refineries and upgraders, we have hired 300 staff this fiscal year, which is a 25 to 30 per cent growth in staff,” said Olsson.

“We would like to hire another 300, which means in about 18-24 months we would have hired about 600 new people.”

Olsson said these new employees are being hired into staff positions, which does not include trade positions.

PCL currently employs about 4,000 people under its Canadian Industrial Division, which is also expected to increase.

PCL’s manager of talent acquisition strategies Barb Bunting said the Commercial Building Division is hiring in every district across Canada. In the next three months, they plan to hire 120 people in Toronto and 40 people in Vancouver.

Bunting said the specific openings that are in demand are project managers, superintendents and estimators.

“We are looking to fill these positions in Canada first, but there are not a lot of these people in the market place,” she said. “So, we are going international. We want to make sure we are only bringing highly qualified candidates with experience that we don’t have in Canada.”

PCL has attended three job fairs in Ireland, as well as job fairs in London and Leeds, England and Johannesburg, South Africa.

These job fairs have resulted in the hiring of 12 staff positions and PCL is still looking at 3 or 4 candidates.

Since April, the company has also hired 20 staff workers under the temporary foreign worker program using the new Expedited Labour Market Opinion, which is issued in ten days.

In the past, this would have taken at least three or four months.

Olsson pointed out that less than 10 per cent of all the new hires are sourced at the international level.

The My Legacy campaign will seek to attract prospective employees from across Canada, the United States, and overseas to fill a specific listing of job openings in each market where PCL operates.

The campaign involves advertisements in all the major Canadian newspapers, on line and on radio, as well as on bill boards. Already, the campaign has increased traffic on the PCL web site by more than 4000 hits a day.

“This is a big thing for us, because we are committed to being an employer of choice,” said Olssen.

“When people are looking for work, we want them to think of us. We have changed our brand to be recognized in the market place to get people.

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