VALLEY BUSINESS / HIRE HOPES: TRENDS IN THE JOB MARKET : Building Industry Faces Shortage of Skilled Workers : Employment: Construction in the Valley has soared since 1996, and experts predict continued growth. But companies have difficulty filling jobs requiring training.

Good help is becoming increasingly hard to find as California’s construction boom has created a heavy demand for skilled workers in the San Fernando Valley.

“Our business has grown so much that we’ve had trouble finding enough qualified workers,” said Robert Larson, a vice president in the Thousand Oaks office of Oltmans Construction, a contractor working on about 20 office and industrial buildings and other commercial projects in the San Fernando Valley area.

In the past four years, Oltmans Construction has seen its staff and annual revenues double to about 300 workers and $300 million, Larson said. About one-third of its work force is employed on Valley jobs.

Larson said Oltmans is just one of many general contracting companies that have found it hard to hire workers in the skilled trades, although plenty of unskilled labor is available.

The shortage of trained workers is just one of the byproducts of a state and national construction boom.

The number of construction jobs in the Valley grew from 25,271 in 1997 to 26,728 last year, an increase of nearly 6%, said Shirley Svorny, director of the San Fernando Valley Research Center at Cal State Northridge.

At the same time, the construction industry payroll here grew from $798 million to $878 million and the number of construction firms increased from 3,511 to 3,632, Svorny said.

Although the university does not have an estimate for the current year, the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. projects the number of construction jobs in the Valley will rise to about 29,400 by the end of the year, said Jack Kyser, the group’s chief economist.

The growth of construction work in the San Fernando Valley is part of a larger regional trend reflecting the resurgence of residential and commercial construction that began around 1996, a sharp contrast to the early 1990s, when building ground to a near halt.

“All of the construction job markets throughout California are essentially booming. Normally, we wouldn’t use a word like that, but we can certainly use it in this case,” said Mark Schniepp, a UC Santa Barbara researcher of state economic conditions.

Construction actually picked up earlier in the Valley than it did in the rest of the region because of the Northridge earthquake in 1994, Schniepp said. After the initial rise, construction declined slightly until picking up strongly again in 1997.

Increased construction also produces more work for architects, building materials outlets, bankers, real estate agents and other businesses related to the building industry, Schniepp noted.

However, he said the boom is producing fewer new homes, offices and industrial buildings than might be expected.

“Construction jobs are at their all-time record high in the state, but the numbers of new residential units and commercial buildings are not near the records because renovation is a large part of the construction picture right now,” Schniepp said.

Separate tallies for new construction versus renovations in the Valley are unavailable. But numbers for all of Los Angeles County indicate that renovations accounted for about 27% of the value of all residential building permits and 42% of all commercial construction both in 1998 and thus far this year, according to figures from the Burbank-based Construction Industry Research Board.

By contrast, at the height of the previous building boom in 1989, renovations accounted for about 17% of the value of all residential construction and 32% of commercial building, board figures show.

New construction in the Valley often involves razing existing buildings to erect new ones, said Larson, of Oltmans Construction, which recently demolished a group of former Litton Industries buildings in Van Nuys to make way for a business park.

One of the highest-profile construction projects recently has been The Plant, which will be a shopping center combined with industrial buildings at the site of the former General Motors assembly plant in Van Nuys.

Construction at The Plant has employed up to 200 workers in the past and currently employs about 100, according to the two developers, Voit Cos. and Selleck Development Group.

Another 100 workers are busy at Cascades Business Park, an 88-acre development at the Golden State and Foothill freeways in Sylmar, said Tom Clark, a principal of Honolulu-based Royal-Clark Development Co., the project’s developer.

While crews of all sizes are being kept busy at a host of residential developments in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys, one of the largest construction crews has yet to take to the field in the Valley.

Building the controversial new terminal at Burbank Airport, a project still being debated, will require an estimated 1,000 workers, according to the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority. No date has been set for the beginning of construction, but the project--if it takes off--could boost an already optimistic outlook for construction jobs in the Valley.

“We expect to see some slowing in construction just because the economy is expected to slow down, but even with the interest rate increase and the slowing of the economy, we don’t look for any recession-like developments,” said Schniepp of UC Santa Barbara. “We will still have a strong demand for housing and strong job creation, which are the factors driving the need for construction.”