If you're a skilled craft worker, AI infrastructure is where you need to be.
The demand is strong and the pay is great. And a pivot in the way workers are fitted to the job means you get the best job with the best construction company. AI is driving mega construction projects. AI also is driving the way construction workers are vetted and routed to positions where their specific skills are in high demand now.
Data center "hyperscalers" Google, Amazon and Meta are funneling millions into the construction of mammoth data centers across the country.
These mega projects require infrastructure, and the demand for craft workers to build the infrastructure is inflating worker salaries as a result.
According to Fortune magazine, this year upwards of $100 billion could be invested by these tech companies into the U.S. data center buildout.
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On a mission to fix the industry's labor shortage, Skillit has been working on the labor infrastructure for AI construction projects.
Zoom Out, Challenge Comes Into Focus
"We're in a multi-trillion-dollar buildout investment cycle that'll support the energy, semiconductor and manufacturing sectors," Patterson said. "There's no AI without that infrastructure and there's no infrastructure without skilled labor."
Suddenly, the industry is seeing a huge tech shift, added Patterson. And a problem that was persistent for years is now front and center.
Alongside fuel, labor is the number one challenge in our ability to build out AI infrastructure, he said. That's why there is so much interest in this problem.
"I think for many years it wasn't just underinvesting in American skilled craft workforce, but it also was misdiagnosing the problem," he said. "We have something like 400,000 workers missing from about 8.3 million workers on the table. That's one in 20 workers missing."
What Patterson means by that is that even if you add workers to the labor pool, if you can't access the workers already there it's like a bucket riddled with holes.
He sees data centers as a single hyper-skill project requiring thousands of workers over a very short time.
"It's like an arms race," he said. "The scale of projects are enormous, so you're having to find equipment operators, electricians, welders, etc., in a very short period of time."
Add to that the fact that you're trying to route them in an industry that's very fragmented.
"Adding more workers will not simply solve the problem if you can't find the ones you have," added Patterson.
And the challenge of discovering, assessing and routing craft workers to remote locations where they aren't accessible can't be solved easily.
The ability to find workers, assess them and route them to these specialties is huge. And not just for data center projects, he said. Other huge infrastructure in energy, housing, roads and bridges and the like needs specialty craft workers.
"But data centers are projects where the pay is also really attractive for craft workers," he said. "There is huge potential for economic development and improvement."
Skillit is revolutionizing the way skilled craft workers are recruited, vetted and placed in construction jobs on AI infrastructure projects.
Patterson said he and his team have spent a couple of decades on both the skilled trade side and the construction employer side of the equation. He's seen the construction industry struggle to find workers according to the skills and experience they have.
"Electricians, who have the ability to travel, want $35 an hour and the opportunity to work for a month," said Patterson. "That position does not exist. So, if you cannot find the skills you're looking for, it's very hard to find the people attached to them."
The challenge for the highly specialized, experienced craft worker is the connection experience with recruiters.
The situation flips when the recruiter can engage workers to just talk, share their hopes and dreams, experience, availability, pay expectation.
With that information, Skillit has built out data-rich profiles of workers, said Patterson. "It's something you can do if you're at a large enterprise scale."
For contractors doing mission critical work, their recruiting team can search for the workers needed instantly.
"That infrastructure previously never existed," he said. "It was very much word of mouth, in a union hall, or 'this worker we just hired knows of a worker.' It's a very inefficient, painful process to discover, assess and bring skilled workers onboard. That's the underlying problem, we believe."
He said if the company's AI-based system could solve just this challenge, 95 percent of the construction workforce would become available for infrastructure jobs.
"We've never before had workers be able to digitize who they are as a nuanced craft worker," he said.
Skillit's team developed a construction-specific, craft-worker-first onboarding experience. "As a result, we're able to find them," Patterson said.
The types of data center projects on which skilled workers find jobs via Skillit's services is across the board, he added.
Extending Industry Reach Through Strategic Partnerships
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Some 6 percent of the company's network is located in Georgia. It serves 380 metro regions across the United States, said Patterson.
In June, Skillit launched a strategic partnership with DPR Construction and Suffolk Construction's venture capital arm, Suffolk Technologies. Supported as well by equity investments from WND Ventures, the venture capital arm of DPR, the connections marked a major milestone, the company said.
"The investment deepens Skillit's partnership with two of the construction industry's largest builders, who will serve as national-scale design partners."
The partnerships support continued growth of Skillit's worker network, workflows, data, automation capabilities and executive team, it said.
It also leaves Skillet well-positioned as it moves toward onboarding the next wave of workers.
"Skillit's mission is to solve construction's labor shortage, starting with fixing access to the millions of skilled workers who already exist," said Patterson in announcing the partnership. "Having strategic partners … is a strong signal that the industry is ready for, and consolidating around, a new category of AI-powered craft hiring infrastructure."
Patterson said the construction industry is entering an era where workforce infrastructure is as critical as project management, procurement, and scheduling.
"As a self-performing contractor, we understand firsthand how complex and dynamic the skilled craft labor needs are," said Eric Lamb, DPR Construction board member.
Lamb said Skillit's platform reflects that direction as its AI-powered infrastructure helps DPR teams connect with talent in the skilled trades.
DPR supports an approach "that expands access to meaningful work and drives more predictable outcomes for our project teams and their customers," he added.
Jit Kee Chin, CTO of Suffolk Construction, said Skillit is addressing a critical gap in the industry with purpose-built technology.
"Construction's workforce challenges require new infrastructure and smarter systems," said Chin, managing partner of Suffolk Technologies.
Skillit's technology is designed "for the realities of construction hiring and labor deployment," Chin added.
"As labor becomes the industry's most constrained resource, the ability to attract and deploy skilled talent will increasingly define the winners and losers in construction," he said.
Skillit is creating the talent network for 80 percent of workers who don't sit behind a desk, said Diana Kay, Suffolk Technologies partner.
In an era defined by renewed investment in physical industries, this fundamentally changes how labor is found, mobilized and managed."
Skillit also is being tapped by dozens in the construction sector, including Swinerton, Mortenson and Brasfield & Gorrie Industries.
These relationships further support the company's continued growth across the built world, said Patterson.
He believes the challenge for skilled craft workers going through traditional recruiting channels is a lack of "first-principle thinking" on the part of the recruiters.
Until now, "they didn't have the insight into the fact that there's not a shortage but an access problem," he said.
Recruiters, union hall conversations and word-of-mouth referrals don't target the enterprise contractors who do 70 percent of the infrastructure work.
He said until they find Skillit, customers are using online sites like Indeed or job boards and recruiters. "It's not a great solution for all the points mentioned," he said.
"Many are using staffing agencies," he added. "But that gets expensive if you're scaling a data center project. Multiply that by 15 to 30 workers' first year wages."
Furthermore, said Patterson, word-of-mouth and employee referrals can actually be a double-edged sword.
"You hire a supervisor who comes with five workers. That works out great until the supervisor leaves and leaves with those five workers. It's not a great strategy for now or for the future as America scales its AI and data center infrastructure."
