Boston Phoenix Guide To Education 2005
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Trading Up
Turned off by office life? Lean one of the building trades.

BY: GENEVIEVE RAJEWSKI

For weeks, you worked on the project. You attended countless meetings to get everyone’s input. You stayed late to incorporate a VP’s last-minute feedback.

And when all is said and done, what do you have to show for it? Basically, a foot-high paper trail suggesting that more meetings are needed before a decision can be made — and then they’ll probably outsource your job to India.

Maybe it is time to try working with your hands.

The building trades offer the opportunity to finish tangible projects and expend physical energy. They are also, for the most part, enticingly free of office politics and all the emotional baggage it entails. (As anyone who has seen Office Space knows, only the construction site at the movie’s end offers freedom from busywork reports and comments such as “looks like somebody has a case of the Mondays.”)

Construction work also offers attractive job security, even given the industry’s cyclical nature. According to the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment prospects — particularly for carpenters and pipe fitters (or plumbers) — look good to excellent through 2012.

Fueling the demand for these professionals will be the large number of experienced tradespeople leaving their jobs over the coming years. And unlike a host of office jobs, building, wiring and plumbing are hardly tasks that can be outsourced overseas.

Even if you’ve never picked up a hammer, you can apply to a number of quality educational programs, provided you have a high-school diploma (or equivalency degree) and (in some cases) can pass the required math test. Although the competition to get in can be tough, none of the following programs requires construction experience.

A formal education in craftsmanship

According to Robert Delaney, admissions director of the North Bennet Street School, most of the renowned trade school’s students are career-changers in their mid 30s.

“Many [applicants] are sick of sitting in front of a computer all day,” Delaney explains. “Or they are simply not looking forward to losing their third job in five years.”

At the North Bennet Street School, those interested in construction can pursue an intensive classroom/shop education in either modern or preservation carpentry.

Students in the one-year modern-carpentry program learn modern structures and materials. Instruction spans projects ranging from platform framing an entirely new structure to remodeling existing spaces.

“The scope of the training is better than what you would get on the job working for someone,” says Delaney. “If you work for a contractor — particularly early on — you usually end up working only on specific types of projects, carrying a lot of lumber and sheet rock. It is no fun and doesn’t really teach you anything. About half of our program is spent out in the field working on real contracting jobs — such as building a three-story addition with a deck.”

Meanwhile, in the two-year preservation-carpentry program, students learn the tools and skills used in structures built prior to 1850. The emphasis is on historic preservation — including how to preserve and, when necessary, reconstruct original materials.

Preservation-carpentry students spend a major portion of the program working on projects for local nonprofit organizations — including museums, historical societies, and Historic New England (formerly the Society for the Protection of New England Antiquities).

Tuition for both programs is roughly $14,000.

Apprenticeships with local unions

Given the necessity of hands-on learning, apprenticeships through local unions are another great way to learn the building trades.

For example, the Pipefitters Local 537 Training Center accepts about 60 people a year into its five-year apprenticeship program.

Apprentices — most of whom are in their 20s — attend classes two nights a week and up to five Saturdays a year from April to September. There, they learn the ins and outs of installing, maintaining, and repairing many different types of pipe systems for residential, commercial, and public buildings.

To gain experience out in the field, the apprentices are employed by union contractors on jobs ranging from new construction to remodeling work to process piping for pharmaceutical plants. On a project, an apprentice will typically have five journeymen responsible for training them.

Over the five years of their training, apprentices will work a minimum of 6000 hours. In addition to gaining valuable experience, they will earn 40 to 85 percent of the union wage for their efforts, depending on how far along they are in the program. (Initial book fees cost about $400, and apprentices will spend another $100 on books over the five years. After a six-month probationary period, apprentices are initiated into the local union for approximately $90. Monthly dues are about $31.)

The benefits of apprenticing with the union are substantial. In addition to receiving a solid education and wages, apprentices enjoy excellent health and pension benefits.

“In today’s workplace the opportunity to receive an education while working — and while also receiving good health-care benefits and building a protected retirement benefit — is hard to come by, to say the least,” says James L. Walsh, training coordinator for the Pipefitters Local 537 Training Center. “The building-trade unions are still a viable place to receive those types of benefits.”

One-stop shopping

At the Gould Construction Institute, students will find classroom and apprenticeship training for 25 different trades, including construction, carpentry, electrical, HVAC, masonry, plumbing, and roofing.

Offered at 10 locations throughout Massachusetts, the four-year programs require students to attend classes for 150 hours a year. Students also work as apprentices on both private and public jobs. Tuition is less than $1000 a year for all programs.

According to Barbara A. Lagergren, executive director of the Gould Construction Institute, the number of applications to the school’s programs is rising by about 2 percent a year.

She credits the increased interest to the public’s growing realization that “people who love to work with their hands are getting paid well to do it.”

“And it’s not just a job anymore. It’s a career,” Lagergren continues. “There’s a lot of advancement in the construction industry, such as becoming a project manager or an estimator. When you talk to people who own very successful construction companies, you’ll find that they, too, started in the field and worked their way up.”

Genevieve Rajewski can be reached at ticktockwordshop@comcast.net.

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