When Ted Garrison talks, the construction industry listens. A civil engineer by training, he earned his cred over the last 25 years doing everything from swinging a hammer on framing and trim crews to running almost $1 billion worth of work as a project manager.
Today he is a consultant and host of New Construction Strategies 3.0, an influential Internet radio show that focuses on the latest industry trends.
After a recent tour of the Carpenters International Training Center, he wanted his audience to hear about the Brotherhood, its unrivaled system of member training, and, Garrison said, how the union is taking on "the responsibility of training (the construction industry's) future skilled workers."
To learn more, Garrison called on his ITC tour guide, Bill Irwin, executive director of the labor-management Carpenters International Training Fund, which oversees UBC training. The result was an in-depth interview for Garrison’s program.
“New Construction Strategies 3.0 is about ... asking the brightest, most experienced thought leaders we can find two simple questions: What’s coming next? What do we need to do to be prepared for it?” Garrison said.
From the UBC’s perspective, the answers are equally simple, Irwin told Garrison.
“We’re thinking every day about the future and preparing our members for it by seeing what the industry wants and working with the industry in developing the training and delivering it in the classroom and in the field,” Irwin said, noting that UBC affiliate programs spent nearly 200 million private dollars on member training in the past year, something he called “one of the best-kept secrets of the construction industry.”
“We walk the walk when it comes to preparing our members to be the safest and most productive people on the jobsite,” Irwin said. He added that the union’s state-of-the-art ITC “is the hub in the system that can get information on new technologies and new safety regulations into the field very quickly.
“No one does what the UBC does.”
Regarding the UBC’s role in the future, Irwin said, “Our challenge is twofold. First, keep raising our standards on training, productivity, and safety. Second, let people know about it! Carpenters are doers, not talkers, but we can’t let other people define us.”