Contractors pushed to handle demand

CELINA - Area contractors have their hands full this summer with a heavy workload of local government projects and business expansions, prompting the postponement of at least one major project in Celina.

Celina officials recently announced that a portion of the East Livingston Street project has been bumped back to next spring or summer. They had planned this summer to reconstruct the thoroughfare from Main Street to the railroad tracks.

The postponement was attributed to higher-than-anticipated cost of materials and a busy construction season.

"We're a little bit disheartened this year just because of how great of a construction season (we're seeing)," mayor Jeff Hazel told city council members this week.

Officials would not have been able to bid the project out until July due to the requirements of an Ohio Public Works Commission grant they plan to help finance part of the work, Hazel added.

"Because of that there are no contractors that have any room on their schedule to do so," he asserted.

On the private sector side, Nick Koesters, a human resources recruiter with RCS Construction, said he doesn't know exactly how many projects the company has lined up for the summer but noted they're keeping busy.

"We've had to reach out to more subcontractors because we have so much work that we can't do it all ourselves. We'd love to self-perform as much as we could, but there's still just that much work out there with the growing communities around Mercer County that we have to outsource some of it to subcontractors," he said.

Area contractors and their crews are preoccupied with street projects in different municipalities and major expansion projects, such as the new Mercer Landmark facility going up in St. Henry, the Tri Star 2.0 building taking shape along State Route 703 and the West Wing expansion at Mercer Health Community Hospital.

Also, projects are underway at local businesses, such as Moeller Brew Barn's expansion in Maria Stein and a new nursing home and assisted living facilities for Van Crest in St. Marys.

Many homeowners, too, have hired contractors to complete an array of improvements.

The hectic summer season can be credited to thriving businesses but also to a shortage of skilled workers in the construction industry, Koesters noted.

"This is something that I've been seeing in the past couple years, where the skills in the area of construction, I feel like, aren't being pushed as much as they should be in the schools," Koesters said.

Trying to find young, experienced talent in the field is tough, he continued.

Recruiters like Koesters are continually on the lookout for local talent and sometimes struggle to maintain it once they find it.
From February until the end of April, Koesters said he was busy trying to make sure RCS Construction had enough general construction labor for the summer.

Pointing to the area's strong work ethic and lowest unemployment rate in the state, Koesters said there's a very limited workforce available for hiring.