The Brazilian housing sector has expanded significantly in recent years – so quickly that the supply of trained construction workers has not been able to keep pace.
Eighty percent of construction activities in Brazil are self-managed ventures, carried out by workers with little or no training. Most of Brazil’s estimated 4 million construction workers are not adequately prepared to deliver quality work, and are vulnerable to avoidable construction site risks.
This situation is not unique to Brazil. Many other Latin American countries are also coping with insufficient education opportunities and a scarcity of professionally-trained construction workers.
Grupo Amanco – one of the largest construction suppliers in Latin America – realized that this training gap presents a significant market opportunity for the private construction sector. The company has launched a project, “Doutores da Construção” or “Construction Doctors,” in response. It seeks to address the main barrier that low-income construction workers face in accessing training: lack of affordable options that fit their working schedules and that enable new opportunities for employment.
Doutores da Construção’s innovation and success rest on two elements: the use of a state-of-the-art, free-of-charge learning platform and the creation of a winning partnership between workers and local hardware stores.
Hardware stores as multimedia learning hubs:
The process for accessing training is simple. Every day, over 230 hardware stores in Brazil are connected via satellite to live video classes in painting, plumbing, electricity, hydraulic installation classes and many more skills. All a worker has to do is register for one or more training courses, choosing from a broad selection of offerings. Hardware stores are natural gathering spots for construction workers. Now, they are also sites where workers can participate in modularized training sessions via satellite.
When a worker successfully completes a training program, he receives a certificate and his information is then uploaded onto a national online database, through which industries, companies and individual consumers can search for and contact workers with the skills needed for their projects.
Doutores da Construção creates a win-win situation for the entire supply chain of workers, suppliers and consumers. The program is closing the gap between supply and demand of quality construction and qualified, trained professionals, by leveraging the existing network of hardware stores as platforms for education, employment and networking opportunities.
In turn, the workers become economic agents for the stores, building consumer loyalty and sourcing new business. Early data suggests that participating stores in the program have much higher volumes of sales as a result of increased traffic brought into the stores because of the training venue.
With the support of institutions like the IDB, Doutores will be able to further expand their mission and continue to create added value for the whole range of stakeholders in the construction market.
