Find Success by Optimizing Generational Skill Sets

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If you asked the average 10-year-old what he or she wanted to be when they grew up, what do you think their answer would be? Thirty years ago, you might have heard common answers, such as astronaut, firefighter or scientist. Today, you’re just as likely to hear “YouTuber!”

To be clear, I am not making a value judgment here (certainly, there are lucrative careers on YouTube). But this is the reality we face today. As the glass industry moves forward, we must do what we can to cultivate a new generation of professionals to help our businesses succeed.

A recent piece in the Harvard Business Review puts plainly how important this is.

“Demographic change is one of the least understood yet profoundly important issues facing organizations today,” the authors write. “The ‘working-age population’ in the U.S.— those aged 16 to 64—is contracting at a pace not experienced since World War II. Unlike that period, there is no ‘baby boom’ behind it, and none is expected in the near future. Generation Z has three million fewer people than the Millennial generation, and Generation Alpha, which follows Gen Z, is expected to be even smaller … Employers that don’t think beyond today’s working-age population will likely struggle to build a reliable workforce that can maintain operational efficiency and effectiveness.”

So, what can we do? One thing to remember is that younger generations maintain different skills and interests than their older counterparts—but both are important, and glass professionals should take the opportunity to harness them in a way that best suits their business. Doing so not only helps us continue to deliver high-performance glass products but can also help in engagement and retention.

Consider: It’s been well established how modern automated glass processing equipment can help you optimize your pace of production, throughput, quality and consistency. Such machinery is increasingly equipped with new tools that help production shops gain deeper insight into production processes. For instance, sensors can help automatically adjust settings and generate data you can leverage for better decision-making. Operators might analyze that data and control machine function via touchscreens.

And it’s here where you have an opportunity to leverage cross-generational skills for everyone’s benefit. Having grown up using computers and smartphones, you may find that younger workers flourish in such a digitally controlled environment. Meanwhile, older, more experienced glass production workers may have a better eye for product quality and more traditional plant skills—safety, continuous improvement and others. Talk to your people, weigh their strengths and interests, and put them in positions where they’re more likely to succeed.

What’s more, encourage them to share their skills—younger and older workers have a lot to learn from each other, and when they do, it can lead to big operational benefits. Such a strategy can also be an important part of creating engagement and cultivating new leaders—which is especially important as we continue maneuvering within a tight labor market.

Leveraging the skills of every generation of workers will be increasingly important in the coming years. It’s critical to get the most from your equipment to maintain quality and consistency and develop high-performing glass products commercial construction can count on.

Joe Erb is a national account manager for Quanex.

Rising to the Challenge of Prioritizing Sustainability

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The Building Envelope Contractors (BEC) Conference always represents a good opportunity to take the pulse of a critical part of the commercial glass and glazing industry.

This year, I noticed a few things that I believe are indicative of some broader trends. The first is plenty of fresh faces and younger attendees from various stakeholder companies and organizations. This is encouraging as companies within our space get more invested in training, engagement and passing institutional knowledge to a new generation.

The second is a real, driving focus on sustainability across many of the panel discussions and presentations at the conference. That might not sound surprising on its face but considering that most of the BEC attendees are glazing contractors, such a focus is worth noting. Sustainability initiatives and conversations have typically been more predominant with the design and manufacturing community—less so on the installation side.

Such was the change at this year’s conference. It tells us a lot about the challenges and opportunities a broadening push for greater sustainability will have for all industry stakeholders going forward. As we move into the future, sustainability is no longer a niche concern—it’s everyone’s responsibility.

One topic of discussion at BEC revolved around Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). An EPD transparently reports objective, comparable and third-party-verified data about a product’s environmental performance from a life cycle perspective.

Among the code and architectural communities, EPDs are gaining traction as a way to measure a new structure’s environmental impact by necessitating these declarations from building materials used throughout the project. As things are trending, codes and project specs may soon begin demanding such declarations at more individualized, product-specific levels.

This might be all well and good, but there are a few complicating factors. Using an EPD as a point of direct product comparison is frowned upon. That’s because EPDs typically rely on estimations of impacts. Therefore, the accuracy will differ for any particular product line and reported impact. EPDs are not meant to be comparative assertions and may not be comparable or have limited comparability.

Second, the necessity of EPDs at the individual component level would have some major business consequences for anyone going to market with proprietary products or formulations. An EPD necessarily involves the disclosure of a product’s composition—and no manufacturer divulges the specifics of what makes their product competitive.

The commercial glass and glazing industry will need to grapple with this in the coming years. An ongoing dialog with the architectural and code communities will be important. It will be incumbent upon glass and glazing professionals to collaborate and educate on the most effective ways we can help create more sustainable buildings.

And therein lies our opportunity. There is no shortage of ways commercial glass professionals can contribute to sustainable, high-performance commercial structures. We must continue to advocate for the important role that glass and glazing play in our built environments and push the envelope to deliver increasingly high-performance products.

As I said earlier, sustainability is everyone’s responsibility. If we embrace this challenge and continue to innovate, our continued collective success is inevitable.

Joe Erb is a national account manager for Quanex.

Maximizing the Value in Multifamily Development

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Multifamily construction had a good year in 2022. As noted in this recent report from Dodge Data & Analytics:

Nationally, commercial and multifamily construction starts increased by 25%. Commercial and multifamily construction made impressive gains in 2022, largely driven by rising demand for apartments and condos. Not to be outdone, commercial starts also posted strong gains fueled by increased demand for hotel, data center, and retail projects.

The New York metropolitan area was the top market for commercial and multifamily starts in 2022 at $37.1 billion, an increase of 37% from 2021. The Dallas metropolitan area was in second place, totaling $16.7 billion in 2022, a 51% gain. The Washington, D.C., metro area ranked third during 2022 with $11.4 billion in starts—a 38% gain over 2021.

Is it reasonable to expect such numbers to keep growing in 2023? Well, probably not. Another report from the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB), published in January, reasonably predicts that multifamily starts will likely fall in 2023, following 2022’s “unsustainable” high production level.

When a specific market sector—in this case, multifamily housing—may be anticipating slower growth, we can calibrate how to best support and serve that market. For example, NAHB cites slowing rent growth and tightening commercial real estate financing conditions as reasons that may contribute to a potential slowdown.

With this kind of climate, it’s reasonable that developers may look at ways to control their costs more carefully regarding new projects. As this happens, I believe it’s important for our industry to continuously—no matter the forecasted economic conditions—advocate for the value that high-performance commercial glass and related products can bring to any project.

The benefits of multifamily applications are numerous and are well worth the continued investment for any developer interested in making high-performance buildings and comfortable living spaces. And the enabling technologies are likewise worth continued investment for glass professionals serving the multifamily market. Some of those benefits include:

  • Thermal Efficiency: Energy efficiency has been the name of the game in commercial construction for some time now, especially as highly glazed buildings have become popular around the world. Insulating glass technologies like warm-edge spacer systems, which can help optimize thermal efficiency by lowering thermal conductivity, make for a good choice to improve occupancy comfort and optimize energy savings. Meanwhile, multifamily construction is a ripe opportunity to use high-performance commercial vinyl technology that can further enhance thermal efficiency. Commercial vinyl framing is well suited for punched-opening applications, which are numerous in multifamily projects. And if maximized thermal efficiency is the goal, vinyl can be cost-effective; metallic systems typically must incorporate thermal breaks or other measures to match vinyl’s thermal numbers, driving up complexity and cost.
  • Sound Control: In noisy metropolitan environments, where multifamily high-rise buildings can be commonly found, acoustic performance is an important consideration for complete occupancy comfort. Commercial vinyl framing offers benefits here, too. Multi-chamber commercial vinyl extrusions can help mitigate noise, especially when compared with a metallic frame that reverberates more readily. Metallic framing can be designed to eliminate noise by incorporating dampening technology, too, but as noted earlier, such measures can make the design and manufacturing process more complex. A vinyl profile that helps lessen noise ingress from the busy streets below can be an attractive feature.
  • Color Options: Modern color options in vinyl framing have been popular in single-family residential spaces. But condominium and apartment dwellers have desires too. Commercial vinyl technology pairs well with modern color technology. For example, coextruded color technology incorporates color as an integral part of the vinyl profile. Such technologies can deliver outstanding color durability, enhanced scratch resistance versus painting or laminates, and the ability to withstand harsh weather conditions commercial windows face. For manufacturers, they also eliminate any labor involved with paint or laminates.

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Investing in high performance makes good business sense for developers and property owners. It’s been shown that people simply like living in buildings that have been thoughtfully designed to maximize occupancy comfort. And for commercial glass professionals, delivering on those demands is essential. No matter what the rest of the year has in store for multifamily construction, there’s no room for compromise regarding glass and window performance.

Joe Erb is the national account manager for Quanex.