Graduating high school seniors completed a program to help start a career in construction

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – Eleven senior high school students graduated from a Highway Construction Workforce Partnership Program Friday afternoon.

This 6-week program was held at Texas A&M RELLIS campus with classroom and hands-on lessons. The program showed the students what it looked like to start a career in construction.

The director of the program, Charles Gurganus, spoke on the value the program offers.

”We all drive on roadways. Texas is a big state and there’s a lot of demands, so there are a lot of employment opportunities and it’s a high-wage position where you can come out, making time and a half, and these companies have wonderful benefit packages so it can truly be life-changing for somebody that doesn’t see a 4-year degree on the horizon,” said Gurganus. “We think this program affords them that opportunity and introduces them to that.”

Each student who graduated on Friday had jobs lined up at companies like TxDOT, Knife River, and Big Creek Construction.

“We need to make sure people know those needs exist and we need to build programs that get them in there so that we can fill those needs, and that’s hopefully what we are starting to do in the heavy highway industry with this program,” said Gurganus.

This program is helping bridge the gap in skilled trade industries.

A study from Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute says many skilled tradespeople are older and retiring and young people today aren’t choosing trade careers. The study found nearly 2 million manufacturing jobs could go unfilled over the next decade.

Kent Dalsing with Big Creek Construction was at the graduation ceremony and said job candidates don’t show up with the same set of skills anymore.

“There was a time in the old days, say my father or grandfather where most people grew up on farms and ranches,” said Dalsing. “A guy that grew up on the farm would be able to fit right in because he drove a tractor, he could get on a bulldozer and start figuring that out.”

Big Creek has had to adjust their training process to accommodate less experienced workers.

”We are trying to be more organized about how to have exposure to certain things and train them to do the things that we do,” said Dalsing.

Once he heard about the program, he was all in.

“We’re short-handed all the time it seems like, there’s just not people anymore that are versed in the kind of work that we do and so if somebody was able to get some young people and teach them some things that could make it where they help us, I mean I’d be all for it and so we jumped in and helped all we could,” said Dalsing.

“I feel like it’s a fulfilling job because you get to go around and say ‘Hey I did this, I did the pipes on that, or I installed the fire alarms here.’ Even like the roads too, you can drive down a road and be like ‘Hey, I paved that road, I helped make something for the community’ and I think that’s pretty cool,” said program graduate Hugo Moreno.