Celebrating Within Our Industry

By: G. David Sload, President-CEO, ABC Keystone

October is Nationally designated as “Careers in Construction Month.” Keystone traditionally highlights what we do for the industry and our members through all our marketing efforts. Therefore, I want to recap some of the exciting things that happened as well as the number of members that took advantage of the things we offer.

By the time October arrives, we are full gear into the start of our apprenticeship year. So far for the 2022-2023 school year we have 392 students in seven trades. That number will grow as we have yet to begin Heavy Equipment and our new Assembler, Pre-Engineered Metal Building programs. These classes begin later than the others. Once these two programs kick off, we will be training over 400 apprentices.

As part of our workforce development efforts, we hosted our annual fall “Construction Wars” program. This year we hosted 220 middle school students from 23 schools. Will any of these young people be future apprentices? While we don’t know, if we don’t expose them to the trade, they may never come our way. Over the last 4 ½ years we have hosted over 1600 middle schoolers.

We hosted our annual construction craft competition to determine who from Keystone would represent us at the National ABC convention in March 2023. Twelve of the top students from three trades competed and I believe Keystone will have a great team representing us in March.

The winners were:
Plumbing: Richard Barnhart, Frey Lutz Corp.
Carpentry: Matthew Flores, Benchmark Construction Company, Inc.
Electrical: Evan Williams, Haller Enterprises

Additionally, to celebrate the trades and the fine work our journeypersons perform, we held our first team competition. The winner of that competition was Benchmark Construction. They also will be going to the National convention to compete against other teams from around the country.

Of course, in addition to getting young people into the industry and getting them started on a career path, continue to educate and upskill them. Keystone saw 249 members participate in Education and Safety classes. Our members worked hard this month, but they also had some fun and networking, as 419 members participated in our clay shoots and tailgate party. Fun was had and a lot of great networking occurred.

October, a great month at Keystone to celebrate our industry. Over 1,300 people engaged with us and their fellow industry colleagues. This is your industry, and you have much to celebrate and be proud of.

Posted November 1, 2022