Driving Our Economy Forward: Hamilton County’s Construction Career Center

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) — Hamilton County’s Construction Career Center is literally building its future workforce.

Let’s see how it’s driving our economy forward.

“You know, the story is out. A lot of people have been here. And the people that have visited our building, they talk about their experience just here all the time,” said Gerald Harris, Principal. “When you think about the partnerships that we’ve had with Associated General Contractors, and the city and then the county and then Chattanooga State, we have those bodies of people that are always using our building for certain events. Which means that there are lot of people throughout the community that come into this building, so they get to know about the new things that’s happening with the Construction Career Center. This is an opportunity for kids to not only learn a trade, but to earn certification, something that they’ll have for a lifetime.”

“The success part has been that most of our returning kids have been involved with construction companies all summer long, so they’ve been on the job,” said John Youngberg, CPE Instructor. “Most of them are starting out at $15 an hour, and some of them are making even more than that. This program allows you to get a career right out of high school. Sometimes the kid, if the student shows a lot of skill, we’ll get them an internship where they actually go work with somebody for up to three months while they’re still enrolled with us. And they get credit for that experience. And that almost always results in a job.”

“One of the other successes that we’ve had, I think that we’re extremely proud of is that we’ve had some seniors that actually have jobs with some of the partnerships through AGC,” Harris said. “It’s a great opportunity for them to hit the ground running. At the same time, those kids that are out in the career field also will be coming back to finish up the program next year. So it’s really good that we still have that grasp around them kind of sort of where we can support them in regards to some of the things that the challenges that they have right now, this is such something that’s new that when we have meetings, there’s always something that people have certain ideas and this and that. It’s nothing that we can go and, there’s a model that looks like this. We are the model, right? So we’re creating it as we go. The goals that we have is that we want to provide more demand than we have supply. That’s a good problem to have, right? And so hopefully in the next couple of years, these walls will be busting down with students.”