Education Update: Florida Construction Career Days

By Lauren Hieghton, Staff Writer

Each year, thousands of students across Florida are introduced to the construction industry. They have the opportunity to get their hands dirty and see what career opportunities the field holds during Construction Career Days (CCD).

Coordinated and presented by transportation industry partners from the public and private sectors, CCD gives students who may not have known about available jobs in construction the access to hands-on learning with machinery in a field trip format. For CCD, Florida is broken into five regions, each with their own events for Northwest, Northeast, Central, Tampa Bay and South Florida.

In January, 3,000 students from nine counties in Central Florida flocked to Construction Career Days (CCD) to discover what could be their career for years to come.

High school juniors and seniors across Central Florida are invited to attend the events at the Volusia County Fairgrounds, including Learning Labs where they gain an understanding of an array of concepts like bridge design, construction equipment, drone use in surveying and how asphalt works.

The demand for qualified construction workers in the state has made CCD more necessary than ever. According to the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) of Florida, the state is suffering from the largest skilled labor shortage in recent history. Qualified workers are needed to accomplish the expanding demands of the industry.

Transportation to and from the event and meals are provided to attendees, removing barriers to entry and giving employers the chance to interact with inquisitive high school and technical students.

All of this coordination is thanks to the help of over 30 committee members from Central Florida CCD, over 250 day-off volunteers, and with the help of sponsors including the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). Carlos Dawson and Lauren Pearson lead the CCD planning committee, bringing their experience from two perspectives to coordinate the effort.

Dawson serves as the chair of the nonprofit, utilizing his experience as a CEI Operations Engineer at Elipsis Engineering and Consulting. Meanwhile, his co-chair Pearson works for FDOT’s District Traffic Operations as manager of the Regional Transportation Management Center.

Together, they orchestrate the various committees to ensure CCD runs like a well-oiled machine.

“Our major role is ensuring that all of the different subcommittees within the event are meeting certain deadlines, timelines, and that everything that we need to accomplish, the full checklist is completed to put all those puzzle pieces together,” said Pearson.

Many of the events for CCD utilize local fairgrounds to host each year, much like Central Florida’s CCD home venue in Deland.

“They've been the most ideal space that can accommodate large pieces of equipment as well as indoor space for learning labs and for exhibit areas and things like that,” Dawson said. “So it's been really ideal to partner with different fairgrounds.”

Over the course of the day, students and their chaperones travel between Learning Labs covering distinct skills in the industry. A favorite is the equipment lab.

“[The students] go out into the field; they could use an excavator, they could use a loader or a skid steer, and get that hands-on training to really show them, ‘Hey, there are other opportunities. If you don't want to go to college, or even if you do want to go to college and come back to the construction industry, these are the opportunities that are available to you,’” said Dawson.

Students are also offered an opportunity to visit the exhibit center, where vendors set up booths to showcase their work; some even offer information about hiring.

“The reality is that the need in not just the construction industry, but in all of the related transportation fields, the demand for employees and future workers, especially with the growth and the number of projects that we're seeing come to life here in Florida specifically, especially as the governor is pushing the Moving Florida Forward initiatives along and we're advancing projects by decades, we know that the demand is so high to meet the needs of these projects,” Pearson said.

With a packed day of events, Central Florida CCD is a mainstay in the community, making an impact for years to come.

“We have had several students whose schools will come back to the event year after year,” said Pearson. “A lot of times it's the same teachers bringing new classes of students to the event. They'll walk in and they'll see one of their prior students working a Learning Lab at the event because it means something to them to come back and give back to an event that they benefited from.”

To the north, Northeast Florida CCD serves FDOT District 2, inviting students from 18 counties to the events. Kelly Mosley, one of two career and technical education supervisors in the Clay County School District, has experienced CCD in Northeast Florida as an educator. She has brought students from her county to experience the event for many years.

“In our program, we do a really good job of trying to provide lab settings and shop settings that provide handson experiences for our students,” Mosley said. “But we can only do so much in the confines of brick-and-mortar schools.”

With about 120 career and technical education teachers across the county in middle and high schools, the county serves about 11,000 students. In this pivotal time in their lives, they benefit from having access to learn about a variety of career opportunities.

“That's where events like construction career day take it to a whole new level and expose students to career opportunities, equipment, job skills, and different postsecondary options that we might not be able to expose them to at the school level,” said Mosley. “There's a lot of students that don't know what they don't know until they go to construction career day.

“We can tell them about these things, but construction career day shows them about these things.”