The Alaska Contractor - Summer 2008

president of AGC’s executive board
and owner of Construction Solutions of
America; AGC executive director John
MacKinnon; Robby Capps, F & W Construction
Co.; Mike Swalling, Swalling
Construction Co.; Phil Anderson, Phil
Anderson Co., and Dick Engelbretson,
Aurora Construction Supply Inc.
Foundation board members have
been drawing up a mission statement,
setting up a budget and figuring out how
to fund that budget. AGC’s training and
education directors will move over to the
foundation.
“We have plans for more construction
academies in the state but we have
to have a staff that has time to handle
the workload,” Fike said.
AGC’s training director, Bob Cress,
said the foundation will have three
components.
“One is work force development,
for people who are not in the industry
yet,” he said. “The second is education,
considered the post-secondary part after
high school, including apprenticeships.
And the third is training – offering specialty
contractor classes for people already
employed and in the industry.”
Cress said the training courses include
Alaska Certified Erosion Sediment
Control Lead (AK-CESCL) certifications,
in which nearly 700 attendees have been
certified through the AGC classes offered
through June. Other training is available
in Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design (LEED) and Building Informational
Modeling (BIM), Cress said.
“We’re going to do our part to provide
opportunities for students,” Cress
said.
Cattanach said the situation now
with construction-related training and
education is no longer the way it was
back in the days when work began on
the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.
“We didn’t train Alaskans in preparation
for the jobs that would exist,” he said.
“It happened quickly. Alaska was, from a
training standpoint, unprepared. A lot of
jobs went to outsiders. This time will be
different. We’ve had enough lead time
on this so that we should be able to train
Alaskans for jobs on the gas pipeline. And
hopefully, we will have trained people so
they’ll have careers after the pipeline.”
Tracy Kalytiak is a freelance writer in
the Palmer area.