👶 Young minds attempt to answer the biggest questions in construction today…

ENR published an article about the construction industry’s rising stars, who are chock-full of ideas on how to polish the hull of the construction industry in the coming years. The Top 20 Under 40 (that's right, we're using a baby emoji to convey someone 39 and under) winners gathered in New Orleans to address key challenges in the industry, from employee burnout and workforce development to recruitment and retention. The talented young professionals highlighted collaboration and communication as the keys to clearing these hurdles, and didn’t forget to vouch for the work-life balance of workers. Hear, hear. 

Of course, AI had to enter the chat—with our nominees encouraging senior-level employees to keep with the times and embrace the new technologies that may or may not eventually turn us into those husky, content-consuming Earthlings in Wall-E. Here are a few more highlights from the article:

• The winners were selected from nearly 600 nominations across the U.S. and Puerto Rico, based on career experience, industry leadership, community service, and involvement in landmark projects

• Embracing innovation doesn't always mean rolling fancy new software but also focusing on mental and physical health of staff.

• When a longtime employee leaves, “you lose the institutional knowledge that person had, unless the next generation of employees are developed enough to feel confident in their roles,” says Stephen Parker, a Stantec senior associate. “There is no amount of dollars and cents that can make up for it in terms of client relationships [and] engagement.”

• America's carbon emission footprint in construction will be a group effort: “It’s not going to be just contractors, just designers or just owners. We all have to move in the same direction together.”

🔨 Here's the Thing

While all of these issues are critical, these 3 topics stood out: burnout, recruitment/retention, and a reluctance to embrace AI tools. 

For construction workers, being overworked isn’t new—but the recent acceptance of burnout as a symptomatic condition is driving employers to find a solution. One of the Top 20 Under 40 winners, Megan McDonald of WSP, points to formal knowledge-sharing pathways between managers and employees as the solution to quelling burnout. This keeps newly promoted employees prepared for their next role, rather than having to learn their new responsibilities as they go. 

As for recruitment and retention, the labor shortage is laying waste (shocker). In response, many companies are leaning less on qualifications to focus more on training and mentorship. Others are solely hiring for personality fit, with plans to train suitable candidates for what they need to know. However, labor cost inflation for new employees is another issue cited by Stephen Parker in the article, who notes that new hire training and onboarding costs can often double their salaries.

Lastly, your favorite hot button and beaten horse: AI. Surprise, surprise, the young professionals are embracing it, noting how it could transform how firms check plan sets by nixing hours of spell-checking. Another industry leader in the traffic vertical, Sanjay Paul, also noted how AI is removing human error in the transportation sector. It’s detecting road hazards, adjusting light times at intersections with frightening precision, and being used in autonomous cars too. 

When you and your coworker both get that SLAB email notification in the parking lot

Ex-expert: OpenAI's CEO thinks AI will be smarter than experts in 10 years. In 10 years, we'll also be publishing that job site robot revolt guide alluded to in the header—stay tuned.

Palm reading: No need to take out that ID, we'll just need a gander at that palm. Coors Field is piloting using Amazon palm scans starting this week for baseball fans to buy alcohol. Nope, letting Amazon have record of our precious palm print data isn't worrisome at all.

Link to the job site: Who knew Zelda would turn out to be a construction-adjacent game and nerds around the world would be getting engineering degrees from the University of Hyrule. Check out the wildest Tears of the Kingdom builds. (video)

Roy vey: In honor of Succession and Barry closing up shop forever this week, here are the 40 best series finales of the 21st century (SLAB hot take: if Severance never comes back, its first season finale should be retroactively included).

Intermittent fast: Taking a page from the Marvel and cockroach handbook, the Fast series will seemingly never die as countless spin-offs and sequels are in the works. We're still bitter they didn't use "Fast 10 Your Seatbelts" as the tagline for the 10th film that came out this week.

Balancing act: Dust off your dad shoes, New Balances are cool again. Although... buzzy articles like this would imply they're now not cool. The only true way to not be out-of-style is going barefoot.

Long LIV the king: Brooks Koepka puts (putts) himself in the upper echelon of history by winning his fifth major.

Ash vs. Evil Dead: There's a volcano that's really harshing the vibe on some airports in Mexico City. Excuse me, did you not read the "No Spewing Ash" sign right here? (video)

The road to El Dor-Lotto: Some guy in Michigan thought the lottery calling him to tell him he'd won half a mil was a scam. At least now he can afford to hire an assistant to field his cold calls.

Bye for now, The SLAB

PS: That SLAB Yeti tumbler isn't going to win itself. Stop hoarding this newsletter and be sure to share the wealth with every construction folk you can think of to dock those referral points.