A few weeks ago, a crane collapsed early on a Sunday morning while attempting to remove a 7,000-pound sign which hangs over the intersection of Westheimer and Post Oak Boulevard near the Houston Galleria. Anyone who has visited the area will remember the iconic circular street signs which hang over three Galleria-area intersections. The signs are being temporarily relocated during a construction project to widen Post Oak Blvd.
While at the ABC 2017 National Craft Championships, I enjoyed talking with three individuals who are all involved in training programs for the skilled craft trades. This is the third in a series of posts featuring excerpts from conversations I had with some of the industry leaders I met at the event.
April 26, 2017
Last month, the Associated Builders and Contractors hosted the 2017 National Craft Championships, a two-day competition for craft profession trainees and apprentices. While the competitors were completing the six-hour hands-on portion of the competition, I spoke with project managers for some of the skilled craft competitions to get an idea of what the competitors were being asked to do.
April 17, 2017
The Construction & Maintenance Education Foundation (CMEF), an educational affiliate of ABC Greater Houston, hosted an open house yesterday at their Performance Verification Center in La Porte, Texas. CMEF contributors, ABC members, and guests were invited to tour the facility while enjoying some live music and barbeque.
March 31, 2017
The 2017 ABC National Craft Championships concluded with an awards ceremony at 8:30 am Friday morning in the Floridian Ballroom of the Greater Fort Lauderdale and Broward County Convention Center. I was privileged to attend the hands-on portion of the two-day competition for craft profession trainees and apprentices, as well as the awards ceremony Friday morning for what Greg Sizemore, ABC Vice President of EH&S and Workforce Development, called “The biggest and best celebration of merit shop construction.”
March 24, 2017
The first of four Lift & Move USA career events in 2017 was held February 14 in Tampa, Florida, hosted by ALL Crane Rental of Florida, LLC, part of the ALL Family of Companies. The event saw approximately 450 young people from local schools and colleges who converged on ALL Crane’s Tampa facility to learn first-hand about careers in the crane, rigging and specialized transport industry and to see heavy equipment at close quarters. I attended one of the Lift & Move events last year in Houston and shared some video interviews I recorded then.Lift & Move USA is a program promoting careers in the industry to high school and college students and veterans.
March 10, 2017
“Identifying pathways for individuals to move into the ‘middle skill’ jobs is a key factor affecting our competitiveness as a regional economy, and it is a key factor in creating a cohesive community where everyone has a sense of opportunity in this region.” – Bob Harvey
March 01, 2017
Next week the 2017 National Craft Championships, hosted by the Associated Builders and Contractors of America (ABC), will take place at the beautiful Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale. Prior to their trip to Florida, I was able to meet up with three of the craft trainees and apprentices from the Houston area who will be competing in the event. Each of these competitors is sponsored by the Construction and Maintenance Education Foundation (CMEF), the educational affiliate of ABC Greater Houston. Each of them receives CMEF Training either at a CMEF sponsored college campus or at the CMEF training facility in La Porte, Texas.
February 24, 2017
Sheral Keller, the director of the Office of Workers’ Compensation Administration at the Louisiana Workforce Commission (OWCA), has written an article in which she explains how worker misclassification and payroll fraud have directly harmed Louisiana employees and taxpaying citizens in past years, and how in 2017 the OWCA Fraud Unit and the Office of Unemployment Insurance (UI) plan to work together to combat these unscrupulous and illegal practices. The article was published in the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report and in the first quarter 2017 edition of 10/12 Industry Report.
February 20, 2017
An article by Johnny Magdaleno which was published in Next City last month offers reactions by representatives from the Workers Defense Project and Workforce Solutions Capital Area to a report by personal finance website NerdWallet which listed Austin, Texas as “the best place to search for a job in 2017.”The Austin area is indeed growing its employment opportunities in technical fields with the opening of Apple’s new campus and the promised funding by Microsoft, Google, and IBM for internships for low-income job seekers and veterans through the TechHire initiative.However, workers in the construction, restaurant, and other service industries are not all finding the same job growth opportunities.
February 02, 2017
