Bringing construction instruction back to school

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The longstanding shortage of skilled construction labor is forcing companies’ leaders to take more concrete action to remedy the situation.

A generational lack of workers can be attributed to aftereffects of the Great Recession, when hundreds of thousands of them left the industry in response to a lack of steady work. Now, however, construction is booming in the Pacific Northwest and other markets, and the total number of workers still has not reached the figures seen over a decade ago.

“It is has always been a concern to find enough skilled trades workers,” Kirby Nagelhout Construction President Jeff Deswert said. “Recently, if you look at the average age of our tradespeople, it’s not sustainable right now. What we’ll see is due to the efforts toward technology and higher education and the results of the recession, where nobody was entering the trades then. We’re going to find ourselves in a real pickle in the times ahead, not that we’re not in a pickle now.”

Deswert and his Bend-based company are taking action. Together with Central Oregon contractor Sunwest Builders, Kirby Nagelhout Construction is spearheading a public-private partnership with Central Oregon Community College to offer a new college course to prospective construction workers.

Operating much like pre-apprenticeship programs in the Portland-metro area, the COCC course offers students an introduction to construction – instruction of both technical skills and soft skills.

“It definitely started with the contractors coming to us,” said Rachel Knox, the continuing education program manager at COCC. “For a long time, we wanted to do something here in Central Oregon, but we really didn’t know where to start. So when it landed in my lap I made a commitment that we would start this fall. It’s not a perfect start, but we’re just getting going.”

The non-credit course started last month and will run for six weeks. Classes are held two nights a week in workshop space provided by the Bend college. The first 14 students are being taught the very basics of the industry, including how to read blueprints, carry out construction math, prevent injuries, use tools and communicate clearly. The basic expectations of the industry, such as punctuality, are laid out for students.

Deswert and Steve Buettner, owner of Sunwest Builders, are lead instructors for the course. They are joined by tradespeople from other partners, including Griffin Construction, Hayden Homes, Northwest Framing Systems, Miller Lumber, Skanska USA, the Central Oregon Builders Association and CS Construction.

These firms also helped set up the Central Oregon Community College Construction and Trades Scholarship Fund to support students pursuing a career in construction. The COBA was especially helpful, contributing $50,000 toward the cause, Knox said.

The program is based on National Center for Construction Education and Research curriculum, which is also used by Portland’s Northwest College of Construction for its apprenticeship programs.

“We’re trying to address the most painful skills gap first,” Knox said. “We’re starting at the absolute basics, and really there are so many pain points. Some of it is technical skill for sure, and some of it is the soft skills like how do we get them to ask (instructors) intelligent questions and build confidence.”

The program will be more refined by next year, Knox said.

“We’re just at the launch right now,” she said.

The industry’s workforce situation, Deswert said, is not just a product of the recession, but also the public education system’s long-standing devaluation of skilled trades. Deswert acquired in high school valuable welding skills that allowed him to find employment immediately after graduation. From there, he worked his way through the ranks to eventually become a company president. That path barely exists anymore, he said. Yet there are signs of change.

“We’re seeing that the high school levels are starting to put CTE programs back in place where they were really missing for the last couple of decades,” Deswert said. “The education community has heard our cry loud and clear and I think we’re seeing that.”

The COCC program, he added, is at least in part a response to that.

“We’re wanting to add on to what the school systems are coming back to,” he said. “It’s best for kids who learn hands-on, and the school systems are seeing that.”

The students are now approaching the end of the program, which had them construct two small structures in a college workshop space. The course’s classroom portion takes up a minority of students’ time.

“It has to be very hands-on,” Knox said. “If we’re in the classroom for more than about an hour and a half we’re going to lose these folks; they gravitate toward construction because they don’t want to be in the classroom.”

Another part of the issue, Knox added, is that it is really a community-wide discussion.

“We are talking to the high schools and their CTE programs, all the alternative programs, the GED programs,” she said. “And if I’m doing this, I’m holding a pipe and I don’t have a pipeline. So what we’re more interested in is how … we find ways to link up to other options in Central Oregon.”