Talking about item that is before us building um residential construction workforce and um Alabama Home Builders Academy Network where we have present is District One Representative Penn and District Six, Council Woods, District Five, Councilman Fleming, District Two, Councilwoman Ingram, District Four, Councilman Reynolds.

We have our attorney.

We have members of administration.

We have to suit a clerk and her style.

And we do have some representatives from a home builder residential construction academy and then at work.

Good afternoon.

Thanks for having us.

Robert Collins, President Home Builders Association and South Alabama Home Building Academy.

Today we're just going to bring everybody up to speed who may not be aware.

The South Alabama Home Building Academy is kind of birthed out of the home builders association and developing our workforce locally.

As of right now, they have graduated over 700 students in the last five years.

We're basically going to follow the same outline that they have started.

We're actually going to be adding one additional trade to our academy.

We're going to start off with five uh trade specific trades, HVAC, electrical, carpentry, plumbing, and roofing.

These are all very needed in our local building trades.

And we're also looking to expand as needs arise, whether it be masonry, concrete work, so on and so forth.

So our class, uh our first class is going to be in January, January the 8th.

And they are eight-week classes, two nights a week from 5 30 to 8 30.

Basic skills training, more or less like a boot camp, uh, and it's tuition free for the students that that join.

Uh according to Huntsville's numbers, the average age student that comes right now is 30 years of age.

So that's the average.

So the minimum requirement is 17 years of age, legal to work in the United States, and they have to pass the drug test.

Um, I'll get into a few more of the numbers later in the presentation.

Uh, two of the classes are going to be work site safety, nine are going to be basic skills.

You'd be learning how to use a lot of the power tools, compound miters, skill saw, speed square, tape measure, uh, which is very big.

This it's hard to find a lot of people that actually know how to read the tape measure and the fractions and things like that.

So we teach them those basic skills.

And then the last five classes are the trade-specific classes.

So they can pick after about five classes.

We start trying to get them honed in on what skill do you want to focus on on the last five classes.

Uh, so that covers the 16 classes.

Now, also, as a student goes through, let's say, for example, they take HVAC the first time, and they go out and they start a career in HVAC and the insulation.

They don't like being around the installation in the attics.

They can come back again and not have to go through all the basic training skills, but they can take the trade specific skills on any of them.

And they've had people come back and take all of the trades uh in Huntsville.

So it's open for that.

The main focus is to get our workforce built up and find them a career that they want to use.

Uh, let's see.

There's also a program that we will implement uh later on uh for plumbing that advances uh plumbing apprentices.

So currently the state laws you have to have two years under a master uh plumber to be able to qualify to take your apprenticeship course.

Going through this advanced class, um, that's a nine-month class, and working a year under a master plumber that shortens it to one year, and that's been approved through the state license board.

So that would also speed up their their career and make an advance uh and earning a living for for them and their family.

And the average uh starting pay we're seeing right now is sixteen dollars an hour for somebody that's gone through the class, eight weeks, eight weeks of training and starting out at $16 an hour is pretty good for someone that doesn't have a career or much experience at all.

So it's it's been very successful.

There, uh another number for uh uh I think it's 70% of those that have gone through the class have gone into construction, it's over 90% retention for those that actually go into the trade like 90 to 95 percent.

So on that page, it kind of shows you some of the the tools that they'll use uh in construction skills boot camps, the miter saw and the uh one of the activities where they learn how to use it, use the measuring tape, mark the board, cut it, and learn how to use the saw.

So on the uh gender spectrum, what they're showing here that um race and ethnic uh ethnicity, white 37.8 percent, non-white 58.3 percent.

Uh, and on gender, 25% of the students are female, actually going to the plumbing and electrical trades mostly from what what we're being told towards the back, uh you'll see probably eight eight pictures here that show some of the students and some of the recruiting that uh Naha has done.

Uh, we're gonna kind of mirror this, but we're gonna start uh this coming year going into all the different schools and introducing them starting at elementary school up to um high school.

And this last week we went to the chamber meeting on Thursday, and then we went with Dr.

White and Miss Mento to two of the uh trade academic or career centers.

Um we started at Faulkner, and then we went to the Bryant Center.

Uh where we're well received at both locations.

Um we start going to the schools, we'll start introducing them to the trades and what they are and different careers that they may could have, and just start introducing that to them at a young age and try to build up a workforce development for every five trades, skilled trades that leave the trades.

We've only been gaining one tradesman for probably two decades.

So it's it's hard to sustain that given that type of fallout on the on the tradespeople.

So this was the home builders.

We're not going to fix it overnight, but this is a home builders association trying to help what's been going the wrong direction for a number of years.

Um, you know, 2008 was probably one of the biggest hurdles that uh that hurt the industry when the market went down, it was hard for anyone to even find work.

So at that point, they had to find another career to try to go into.

So we're trying to fight back on that right now with this this academy.

Oh, yeah.

All right.

So another thing that we do for our students, uh, when they come to the class, we we assign them a set of tools that they'll use, um, basic tools that they can use wherever they go to work.

When that student graduates that the class and they go into uh construction career, we give them their first set of tools, which is very big.

You know, when I first started uh doing air conditioning work here for T Bachelor and Son and Air Tech, which is late 90s, I would go to the supply houses, buy my tools on an account that they had, and then I would pay off my tools, you know, every week as I got a paycheck.

They would just hold hold out so much money for the tools that I that I bought.

So we're gonna start those students off with their first set of hand tools so that they can go straight into the trade and you know provide for themselves.

Uh we also at the end of the class, we're gonna do a uh a job fare basically, so that we're gonna have um employers coming and interviewing all the students that are going through the classes uh and trying to get them a job if they don't already have one, get them set up with an employer towards the end of the uh their cohort there.

So this also will do is it'll give uh a pool of employees for our employers in in the area.

Um, this last few years, we've had several jobs that you know for my personal business that we weren't able to fill because some of our trades didn't have enough people.

They were spread then, so we were able weren't able to get uh some of the jobs secured because our subs didn't have enough manpower to do it.

So that this will help give a pool of employees, potential employees to the employers coming on.

This training um basically saves about nine months of on-the-job training from somebody that doesn't have any experience coming through the class, learning the the tools and the supplies that are used in each trade, whether it's electrical, you know, the wiring, what's the different type of wire, why would you use that wire, what are your tools that you would use, clients, so on and so forth, uh, HVAC, whether it's uh insulation, the pipe, the size pipe, how to determine what that is, plumbing, different plumbing parts, uh, and just the basic skill set to get them started.

Um I know y'all are aware of it, but with uh you know, also Airbus, we've got the uh submarine contracts coming in into the port.

We've got a lot of demand for workers uh you know in general, but also to maintain the the housing in the area.

So we're trying to build up our uh workforce so that we can make it more affordable the best that we can by having enough people there to support support the demand.

We're gonna be partnering with uh different groups in the area.

Uh we've we've spoken with you know the schools, of course.

Uh big I think it's big brothers, big sisters.

We've talked to them uh up north, they have partnered with uh his way, uh Boys and Girls Club.

Uh, and you can see the list of the ones there that they have.

So we're gonna in in like fashion gonna contact these different uh community uh organizations, and we've also been uh talking about doing something with uh strickling on some of the the troubled teens and things like that to come in through.

So we haven't finalized anything, but we are working on something there to also help them.

I know that's something the mayor has mentioned that he would like to do.

So we're we're working in that way as well.

Uh we are uh South Alabama Home Building Academy will be one of many Alabama home building academy network uh schools.

So Huntsville is one, they have a satellite in Madison.

Uh Birmingham's coming on board, Montgomery, and then a few other uh counties as well.

Yes.

My name's John Thomas.

So I have a construction company, TCM Remodelers.

We do a lot of upper end remodeling around town.

I've been doing it for 43 years now.

Looks like I'd know better, but I'm still in it.

And it seems like everyone wants to have repairs, additions, modifications done to their homes.

And uh the biggest problem is having people to do it.

We've got contractors, but we need the workers.

We need the skill, the skilled workers to come into the trades to learn it to help support our community.

I know every one of you here are very much concerned with your constituents.

They're the people we're talking to.

We're they're the ones we're willing to help should they need a help up, a boost.

Um this will extend far beyond just our ability to meet your needs.

I think this will go all the way from teaching the younger people in the lower classes that uh lower schools, that there is another alternate to education and to making a living in this uh wonderful country we have.

And one of them is through construction.

When I first walked out on the construction job, that was probably 60 years ago, maybe not quite, but um, I had no idea what to say, what to expect, what they wanted.

I couldn't speak the constructionese that we have there.

All of this is just an effort to make people.