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The construction industry is facing a major labor shortage, but programs and people across the country are working locally to solve the problem. This series highlights efforts that help recruit the next generation of construction professionals. Read previous posts here.
Do you know of any groups that help attract workers to the construction industry? Let us know.
Sean Kilcrease is moving up the depth chart at Nissan Stadium. But he’s not a member of the home team for the Tennessee Titans, he’s a quality control inspector.
Kilcrease, 24, is a Nashville native and an employee of Baker Construction, a Monroe, Ohio, company that bills itself as the nation’s largest concrete contractor. Six months after starting as a laborer, he was promoted to the quality control team.
Before construction, Kilcrease worked at Starbucks. He had barely considered a career in the workplace before someone close to him steered him in a new direction.
“My girlfriend, she put me into construction. She had her connections and thought I should try the class.”
That class was part of the Titans construction training campor TC2. The program takes people with zero construction experience and puts them on the job for one of the most prominent sports builds in the country.
Courtesy of Turner Construction
The Tennessee Builders Alliance, the joint venture the construction of the $2.1 billion stadiumfacilitated training. The project team consists of New York City-based Turner Construction; Indianapolis-based AECOM Hunt; Brentwood, Tenn.-based Polk & Associates Construction; and Nashville-based ICF Builders & Consultants.
Training camp
The five-week TC2 uses the National Center for Construction Education and Research Artisan Work Curriculumaccording to the JV website. Some of the trades included are mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, drywall and painting.
There are some basic requirements to join the program, according to the TBA. Participants must be residents of Northern Middle Tennessee, for example, and have a high school diploma or high school equivalency. They must also pass a drug test and background assessment skill test
TC2 offers multiple certifications, including OSHA 30. Although it originally certified only OSHA 10, the team listened to feedback from business partners and expanded the offering, said Jessica Begin, Turner’s community and citizenship specialist.
“We have such great collaboration with our business partners on site, they’re really seeing the value of these people through the program,” Begin said.
Nine cohorts and 112 graduates have completed the program, Herbert Brown, Turner’s director of community and citizenship, told Construction Dive via email. The the ninth cohort graduated on February 13according to a Tennessee Titans Facebook post, and the initiative is accepting applications through 2026. The Titans plans to open the stadium in 2027.
About 60 construction trade partners engage with participants on a day-to-day basis, Begin said. The initiative also features a midway job fair where participants can network with business partners and learn more about working in the workplace.
Begin said it was common for a participant to enter with one trade in mind and then choose to pursue another trade based on their experience.
“The exposure these people have to the different opportunities they have is very life-changing,” he said.
A shrinking workforce
Brown told Construction Dive in an interview that TC2’s goal was to invest in the future of the construction workforce.
“TBA, and more specifically Turner, we take workforce development very seriously and only engage in this space because we know that [in] our industry, many people are retiring and aging now, so it’s really important for us to help train, develop, resource and support the next generation,” Brown said.
In fact, labor shortages have long kept contractors in an awkward position; the construction industry will need to attract 349,000 new workers to keep up with this year’s demand, according to data from Associated Builders and Contractors.
Programs like TC2 could represent a step in the right direction. Of the 112 graduates in the nine cohorts, 78 percent of them, about three out of four, received job offers after graduation in Nashville’s construction industry, Brown wrote.
Kilcrease is one of them. Now, he’s joined the construction profession at Nissan Stadium and everything in it, even if he’s a Dallas Cowboys fan.
