In 2019 FTMA Australia ran our first ever National Fabricator Census and this week we will kick off the 2022 Census. We had a 68% response for the 2019 Census, which was great, but we’d love greater input for the 2022 Census.
When I started in 2009, there was no national database for the frame and truss industry. Every two years, we update our database and this year Jenelle contacted every plant in Australia, to ensue we had the most up to date information.
Over the years we have continued to keep the national database updated and over the years, we have been able to see the changes in each state as shown below.
Total Australian Plants
From the 68% of the industry who responded to the 2019 Census we could see that;
- Nationally we employed 4724
- Men made up 89.8% of employees
- 6% of employees were over the age of 46
- Only 2.7% of employees were indigenous
- Only 1.7% of employees were disabled or had long term health issues
Currently, we have a major skills shortage and these figures demonstrate we could widen our target for employees such as employing more women.
2022 Questions
Below is a list of the questions we have included in the 2022 Census. The 2019 Census focused on key demographics plus training, whereas for this Census, we hope to learn more about your business and what you see as the future for our industry.
The questions include;
Employee Details
- How many staff members are currently employed at your plant?
- How many of your employees work in the following departments?
- How many employees are of the following indigenous status?
- How many of your employees do you categorise as having a disability?
- How many staff do you employ within the following age groups?
- Are you having difficulty recruiting / retaining staff?
Industry Questions
The industry questions give you several choices and various categories to choose;
- What products or services do you currently offer?
- What percentage of your work is done in the following markets?
- We’d like to get an understanding of the work your business is interested in doing in the next few years on top of manufacturing frames & trusses. Please indicate below if you are interested in (several markets to choose)
- We understand timber has become hard to source. What is your attitude towards lightweight steel framing?
- What kind of machinery are you looking to invest in over the next 2-3 years?
- Do your business employ (lists a number of roles such as marketing)
- We’ve seen a lot of consolidation in our industry over the past years with some fabricators interested in exiting the industry by selling their business, whilst others are looking at adding new plants to their business. Where do you sit?
- With the current housing boom, there is a lot of concern regarding builder defaults. Does this concern you and have you already been impacted by defaults?
The Census will not take a huge amount of your time and data is so important to help guide the future of our sector and ensure, FTMA along with our sponsors, can invest in to the right projects to advance our sector.
If you have any questions regarding the Census please give me a bell on 0418 226 242. Otherwise, FTMA gives an iron-clad guarantee that no individual data will be shared with anyone and only aggregated data will be shared with all fabricators and FTMA Members.
Kersten Gentle
Our Principal Partners
