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Work Today Building Tomorrow’s Construction Workforce

Maintenance Technology Magazine ran an article called Homegrown Talent about BE&K’s development of an in-house training center. The curriculum is approved by the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER). BE&K hopes to make this facility open to the public and is also looking at expanding the program to other states where they do work.

The workforce problems we are experiencing in the industry will not go away in the near future and we all have to take part in fixing them. Programs like this are not just for the big companies. The smallest operating team in construction is a journeyman and an apprentice and in that situation a good journeyman takes time out of their day to teach the apprentice the craft. If the leader of a two person team can find time to train their workforce then so can the owner of a two person company and therefore any business can and should make the time to train.

These do not have to be formalized programs. They can be lunchtime sessions. When we were doing work in the Bay Area during the dot-com boom of the late 1990’s we had trouble finding qualified craftsmen. We put on lunchtime training, focusing on conduit bending, wire pulling, basic code, etc. One superintendent running multi-family residential held after-work code sessions for his crew. Just having a PM and Superintendent sit down and have a meeting with foremen about pre-planning, scheduling or change orders will provide huge benefits.

Posted by David on December 29, 2006 08:31 AM|Permalink

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