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Posts Tagged ‘Architecture and Construction’

Advance CTE 2023 Fall Meeting Sponsor Blog: Platinum Sponsor, CareerSafe – CareerSafe Offers Comprehensive Online and On-Demand Safety Training

Tuesday, October 10th, 2023

CareerSafe was founded in 2003 under the core belief that no job is worth a young worker’s life. CareerSafe has expanded their focus to include the whole worker. From safety and health training to employability skills and cybersecurity awareness, CareerSafe is focused on providing the foundational skills workers need to launch successful careers.

Starting with Safety

A first step of safety training can occur as soon as middle school or freshman year, with CareerSafe’s StartSafe program. A site-license specific training will provide five (5) hours of core content, as well as the opportunity to explore additional pathways. StartSafe is the perfect introduction to OSHA and workplace safety, covering topics such as:

OSHA 10-Hour Training 

The next obvious step in each learner’s safety training is OSHA 10-Hour Training in either General Industry or in Construction with several industry-specific pathways including: 

OSHA 10-Hour training is purchase per seat and registered through the U.S. Department of Labor, granting each student a recognized OSHA General or Construction Industry card. 

Cyber Safety Awareness

Technological advances have made the digital world an integral part of everyday life. Unfortunately, that means online risks for young people are also becoming more prevalent. The CareerSafe Cyber Safety Awareness Library contains courses with grade-level focused topics for 6th-12th grades and covers situations like cyberbullying, sexting, and the consequences of school threats. This is a site license program as well. 

Employability Skills

The final step on preparing learners for workplace readiness is the CareerSafe library of Employability skills. 

These courses are available per seat or by site license and they provide quality resources and techniques for building essential skills and strategies applicable in all professional fields. Topics include:

When you add in CareerSafe’s best-of-class customer service, innovative online curriculum, and effective teacher tools, there are numerous ways to educate your learners. 

By offering the whole suite of CareerSafe products, from StartSafe to OSHA 10-hour training, cyber security training to employability skills, the result is a well-rounded, educated young worker who is capable of staying safe in the workplace. 

Scaling Across Your State 

CareerSafe believes that all students deserve the right to a safe and fair workplace. What better way to prepare your students to remain safe in the workplace than to equip them with the knowledge and understanding of OSHA safety training while still in high school. Because our courses easily integrate within your teacher’s existing CTE curriculum and are created to align with the National Career Clusters Framework this opportunity allows for states to scale this course across all pathways for every student. We have Account Executives available across the country to walk you through how to get set up today. Let us help you set your students on a path to success. 

Sherry Pruitt, Executive Director of CareerSafe

Sherry.Pruitt@careersafeonline.com

careersafeonline.com

888-614-7233

By Layla Alagic in Advance CTE Fall Meeting
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Advance CTE 2023 Fall Meeting Sponsor Blog: Gold Sponsor, HBI – Construction Skills Training to Elevate CTE’s Impact

Thursday, October 5th, 2023

Those of us in Career Technical Education (CTE) often speak about preparing learners for careers in the real world. Well, here’s a real-world example of a sector where quite literally millions of careers are waiting to be fulfilled: construction. The number of open construction jobs averages between 300,000 and 400,000 every month. That’s an astonishing figure, especially considering how many good-paying positions await those who choose the field. Half of payroll workers in construction earn $50,460 annually, and the top 25 percent make at least $71,000. 

In the construction industry’s home building sector, employers in every state are paying top dollar for well-trained, entry-level workers. That is, if they can find any. One place they’re successfully identifying them is in high schools, community colleges and other institutions using a curriculum from the trade training nonprofit Home Builders Institute (HBI) called Pre-Apprentice Certificate Training (PACT). 

HBI’s PACT curriculum is designed to provide learners with essential skills vital for careers in construction. Upon completion, graduates receive a certification in up to nine construction trade specialties. The certification is recognized and validated by the nation’s building industry. PACT, which is hands-on, competency-based curriculum, is one of only three, national curriculums approved by the U.S. Department of Labor and several state departments of education.

Gage Trebilcock, left, 17, a senior at Stonington High School, explains his technical drawing in the Pipeline in Manufacturing class he’s enrolled in to Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, second from left, Monday, Oct. 3, 2024. Trebilcock is enrolled in the new pilot program with the Home Builders Institute of Washington, D.C., titled the Pre-Apprenticeship Certificate Training (PACT) program. The pilot program, only the second in the state, is designed to highlight how a local public school system can promote the construction trades. | Tim Martin, The Westerly Sun

 

Home builders are looking for smart, hard-working and ambitious team members. States are elevating CTE’s impact by helping to support the tools and services that train new workers. HBI’s PACT is part of broad efforts by many states to create regional training opportunities, adopt skills-based hiring practices and increase equity and job quality by promoting private sector employment opportunities for a diverse workforce. 

For example, in Rhode Island, the Residential Construction Workforce Partnership serves employers and educators in the state by recruiting and training people who want to join the industry as well as those seeking to upskill current employees. Since its inception, the group has used HBI’s PACT curriculum to great success.

State CTE leaders and economic development professionals understand the synergy between skills training, good jobs and economic strength. After all, wages in construction are higher than in other industries. The average hourly earnings in construction is approaching the $36 mark (in manufacturing, it’s $31.80. Transportation and utilities: $27.67. Overall, in the private sector: $33.20). That kind of solid personal income helps support the bottom line of any tax base.

More broadly, the shortage of affordable rental and for-sale homes is a challenge for every state. The U.S. faces a shortfall of 1.5 million homes, which as a matter of supply and demand, forces rents and house prices higher nationwide. Economists and housing professionals cite the skilled labor gap as a major contributor to the scarcity of affordable homes.

It’s simple. For those we together serve, gaining a valuable skill in residential construction promises limitless career opportunities. And supporting skills training makes economic sense for every state in the nation. 

Learn more about PACT Curriculum and Certification: PACT One Pager

To explore how PACT can be integrated into a state’s CTE initiatives, visit HBI.org and email Partnerships@hbi.org.

Ed Brady, President and CEO, Home Builders Institute (HBI)

By Layla Alagic in Advance CTE Fall Meeting
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Friends of CTE Guest Blog Series: I LOVE MY JOB!

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

Deanna Lewis serves as the Director for Career & Certification Services with the Home Builders Institute (HBI). Prior to joining HBI’s family in 2001, Lewis’ experiences included teaching at the elementary level where she developed a customized curriculum for transitional first grade students; managing the tri-state (Pennsylvania, New Jersey & Delaware) satellite office of the New York Times; and conducting test score interpretation as a consultant for the College Board.

During a recent visit, my plumber said, “I love my job!” as he was patiently answering my hundred and one questions without slowing down on the task at hand (he was getting paid by the hour). He said this before he gave me the bill. I’m sure he was enjoying his job even more as I wrote the check.

His comment, “I love my job,” left an impression on me. I began to wonder what happened to the passion tradesmen and women used to have for their jobs. That sense of excitement about learning plumbing systems or the concept that a carpenter’s work is his or her art. Is that passion still out there?

Will the Workforce be Ready?

It is predicted that by 2014 careers in the Architecture and Construction Career Cluster will start to resume employment levels like those seen in 2007 and will exceed 2007 levels in 2015.[1] Will the industry have a workforce prepared to meet the demands? Carpenters are listed as one of the 30 occupations with the largest employment growth from 2008-18. The profession is categorized as requiring long-term on-the-job training.[2] Are there a sufficient number of trainees to fill the future demand?

Industry Opportunities – Choosing the Right Path

Construction offers opportunities at every level. It is an industry that still has career opportunities following high school. That does not imply that training stops at that point. Instead, it indicates there are still on-the-job training opportunities available. There are also certificate and two-year programs offered at technical schools and community colleges.  For management-level positions, many companies will require a four-year degree.

That being said, it is predicted that overall, 34 percent of the jobs in the Architecture and Construction Career Cluster™ will require at least some postsecondary education and training by 2018.[1] Now is the time to engage youth. Inform them about the educational requirements to be successful in the industry. HBI currently offers a first step to professionalism through its student certification program, which sets the stage for stackable credentials.[4] The National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc) also provides information about the Architecture and Construction Career Cluster™ at http://www.careertech.org/career-clusters/landing-pages/architecture.html.

Educators Making a Difference

Career Technical Education (CTE) has programs in nearly 1,300 public high schools and 1,700 two-year-colleges[3]. HBI is a strong supporter of CTE because it meets our members’ needs and helps students, of all ages, become college and career ready so they have a lifetime of success. CTE programs do an excellent job preparing students for the industry opportunities identified above, but it is clear that instructors go far beyond just preparing students to work.

Stan Sluzenski’s students are bound to be on the right path to becoming industry professionals. Sluzenski, a Building Trades Instructor at St. Croix Regional Technical Center in Calais, Maine, utilizes his resources well to help his students gain respect and experience. He said, “As a teacher, I encounter the need for skilled workers from many different sources, including my local advisory board, community members and industry recruiters.”

The Spokane Home Builders Association in Spokane, Washington, is celebrating 31 years of changing lives and building futures. Kim Waseca-Love, Education/Apprenticeship Director captured the spirit of their program when she said, “Carpentry allows us to express our creative spirit.” Waseca-Love goes on to say, “We also know the feeling of accomplishment that we have when we look at our completed work.” She feels the instructors are the apprenticeship program’s key ingredient. “It is because of their qualifications and passion for the trade that our students are able to acquire all the educational opportunities they need to climb as high as they wish on the residential construction industry’s ladder of success.”

Educators such as Sluzenski and Waseca-Love are leading the charge for a knowledgeable workforce by making sure students interested in the construction industry know…

Just as important, though, they are instilling in their students a crucial passion for the work. It takes time to become a skilled professional in the construction industry. Hopefully, there will be many reaching that status who will chime in with the words . . . “I love my job!”

 

The Friends of CTE Guest Blog Series provides advocates – from business and industry, researchers and organizations – an opportunity to articulate their support for Career Technical Education. The monthly series features a guest blogger who provides their perspective on and
experience with CTE as it relates to policy, the economy and education.

Are you interested in being a guest blogger and expressing your support for CTE? Contact Melinda Findley Lloyd, Communications Consultant, at mlloyd@careertech.org.

 

[1] The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, “Career Clusters:  Forecasting Demand for High School through College Jobs 2008-2018”, Georgetown University, November 2011. http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/clusters-complete-update1.pdf

[2] United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Economic and Employment Projections Table 7. The 30 fastest-growing occupations, 2008-18, December 2009. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.toc.htm

[3] National Center for Education Statistics.

[4] Home Builders Institute, http://www.hbicertification.org

By admin in Uncategorized
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Project Aims to Repair Schools and Create Jobs

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

The 21st Century School Fund and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) proposed last week a project, Fix America’s Schools Today (FAST!), that would create jobs and repair some of the nation’s schools.

Both the Government Accountability Office and the American Society of Civil Engineers agree that school districts haven’t kept up with facility repairs and maintenance for many years. According to the report, ignoring problems with school buildings may result in many problems over time including energy inefficiencies, unsafe drinking water, water damage and moldy environments, poor air quality, inadequate fire alarms and fire safety, compromised building security and structural dangers. The organizations estimate that at least $270 billion in backlogged maintenance or facility problems have not been addressed.

This is where the FAST! project comes into play. The 21st Century Schools Fund and EPI believe that by addressing even one-tenth of the current backlog of school improvement and repair, school districts have the opportunity to create 500,000 jobs for construction workers at a time when over a million are unemployed. Plumbers, building technicians, and energy-related workers would also benefit.

Career Technical Education (CTE) students and workers in the Architecture and Construction Career Cluster would benefit from the increase in job openings, but how would a project like this be funded during these tough economic times?

The report proposes allowing districts to scale up or back on school improvements based on available resources, and suggests adding money for FAST! to existing funding formulas. For more details, view the FAST! report.

By admin in News, Research
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