From Open-Shop Training to New NCCER Goal: Reaching For the ‘Stars’
Pamela Charles got her foot in the door for a construction trade that pays twice what she earned as a lab technician in Port Arthur, Texas. Boyd Worsham wants to show high school students not planning on college how they can still progress into the industry’s executive suite, just as he did. Defense contractor Carole Bionda needs to hire trained craft specialists who are ready to fill project spots now, and Jonathan Yarbrough’s schedule to finish his fast-tracked mega-refinery doesn’t leave much time to verify the skills of his contractor’s workers or train them over again.
Today’s construction industry participants have vastly different makeups and motives, but more of them are linked to the efforts of one little organization with big ambitions: the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER). The Gainesville, Fla.-based developer of national craft training curricula is affiliated with a major construction-education program at the nearby University of Florida, but it doesn’t do any actual training.