A New Construction College Has Been Created

According to the CO Construction Education Foundation our state needs 45k new skilled construction workers by 2027. Because of this a new college was created last November called Western States College of Construction to help train workers in fields like electrical, plumbing, HVAC, pipefitting and sheet metal work. This college was created by various trade groups and labor partners and there are already 1,200 students enrolled. YEAH!

The hope is this will help ending the construction labor shortage in our state. It was very interesting to see the #1 reason cited for the labor shortage per Dave Davia, EVP and CEP of the Rocky Mountain Mechanical Contractors Association—“We took visibility to the trades out of the K-12 system for budget reasons. There was only 1 path for students and that was the traditional 4-year college.” I started saying this 6 years ago in my class “Is the Denver Housing Market in a Bubble?”

According to the DBJ story, students will start as apprentices with a salary of $50k with raises every 6 months, and when they graduate they will start with a salary of $72k to $78k.