Due to the significant growth of Spanish speaking workers, construction executives should expect bilingual jobsites to be the rule, not the exception. As the rate of construction tech adoption increases throughout the industry, there is a rising demand for bilingual construction software to support the growing Spanish-speaking skilled workforce.

Growth of the Bilingual Jobsite

During the past 25 years, the population of Spanish-speaking construction laborers has grown to become a significant portion of the shrinking skilled labor pool in the United States.

From 1990 to 2015, the percentage of people working in the construction industry reporting as Hispanic increased from 9% to 28.6%, according to The Center for Construction Research and Training. In addition, 40% of Hispanic immigrant construction workers surveyed by the CPWR reported that they don't speak English very well, and 21% reported that they can't speak English at all.

What does this mean for contractors? Even in the best of circumstances, communication can be a challenge on construction sites; however, a bilingual jobsite can prove even more complicated to navigate, especially if the superintendent or foreman doesn't speak the language of their crew.

Improving Workflows

According to the Q1 2019 Commercial Construction Index, respondents report that the skilled labor shortage is a major drag on productivity, causing contracting firms to:

• Ask skilled workers to do more work (81%);
• Struggle to meet deadlines (70%);
• Increase costs for new work (63%); and
• Reject new projects (40%).

To boost productivity in the face of the labor shortage, increasing numbers of contractors have turned to construction technology such as smartphone-based reporting and management apps. Even the best technology, however, will fail in a bilingual environment without adequate support for languages beyond English.

A construction company might employ a few bilingual speakers on the jobsite, proficient in communicating well with all the workers, but there is still a need for software solutions that allow accurate data to be captured quickly and efficiently. A bilingual software interface empowers more workers to do this effectively, saving time and eliminating bottlenecks.

Safety Issues

Communication issues are more than an inconvenience and have a very human cost beyond lost productivity. The opportunity for miscommunication amplifies risk in an environment already ripe for safety issues. In the Q3 2018 Commercial Construction Index, 80% of respondents said that the skilled labor shortage threatens jobsite safety.

Hispanic and Latino construction workers seem disproportionately at risk. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rate of work-related fatalities for workers in that category has remained higher than the rate for all other U.S. workers for decades.

This reinforces the importance of bilingual software solutions that can facilitate safety and compliance checking and reporting. It's already difficult to collect this information in the field every day and keep the office updated with accurate and reliable data in a single-language environment. Language differences make the process even harder. Removing language barriers through bilingual software can only improve safety compliance by ensuring that workers can communicate and receive vital safety information.

Software ROI

Improving communication and facilitating better management on a bilingual jobsite boosts productivity and cuts down on administrative overhead. Supervisors and foremen can focus on getting the job done, rather than burning time with miscommunication, translation and endless back and forth.

Functionality to look for when evaluating construction software include the following.

• Users need to be able to easily set their language of choice for both web and mobile versions of the software.
• All reporting and field management functions should be automatically translated into Spanish including notes, application labels and reports. This makes it easier for Spanish speakers in the field to log their daily reports, improving safety on the jobsite and improving compliance and communication between the field and the office.

Facing the challenges of managing a diverse skilled labor pool on a daily basis, construction companies can boost their bottom line by improving communication efficiency with bilingual software. New construction management and reporting apps can provide the most reliable method for capturing field data, and bilingual interfaces with those workers will ensure that the company is capturing what is happening in real time. Yes, better communication saves time and money, but it also prevents serious injuries, and saves lives—that's the best kind of ROI.