By Wayne Peal
Livingston Daily Press & Argus
HOWELL, Mich. (AP) - It's a "hidden" campus but staff is stepping up efforts to bring its opportunities into the open, especially for those looking for an alternative to rising college costs.
Every day, thousands of drivers pass the Operating Engineers 324 training center on M-59, just north of Howell, without realizing the intense, job-building training that takes place inside its open metal gates.
Like any school, the site features a lecture hall.
Like any trade school, it also features workshop areas.
Beyond classrooms and workshops, the 515-acre campus includes a massive crane, a fleet of bulldozers, several road pavers and a host of other specially equipped vehicles. Many of them are computer-driven. All are designed to train students and union apprentices for new, high-tech jobs in Michigan's rebounding construction industry, the Livingston Daily Press & Argus reported.
"Really, there's no other place like this in the U.S. - even in North America," training coordinator Lee Graham said.
Students and apprentices aren't the only people who train at the site.
The Michigan State Police, area fire departments and the FBI all conduct regular training sessions on the property that cover everything from building escapes to homeland security.
Despite students' onsite construction work, much of the site remains a pristine woodland.
"There was a survey a few years ago that showed the streams running through here had some of the purest water around," Graham said.
Its primary focus is train people for jobs in the construction industry - and more 4,000 people have done so each year since the center first opened in the late 1960s. Nonetheless, the training center is currently undergoing something of a rebranding, not only reaching out to a new audience but promoting its programs as an alternative to increasingly expensive classes at four-year colleges and universities.
Many students are sponsored by their employers.
"They can receive training while they're working jobs and getting pay," apprentice program coordinator John Hartwell said.
Walls at the site's central building are lined with photos of projects students have helped build or renovate in the past two decades, from Ford Field and Spartan Stadium to the Veterans Administration hospital in Detroit.
Construction projects and the construction trades took a major hit in Michigan during the Great Recession, but the industry is primed for a comeback. After years of inaction, the state has authorized a major rebuilding plan for Michigan's crumbling roads. A new arena will soon be built in downtown Detroit. Closer to home, both the University of Michigan and St. John Providence health care systems are building major new Livingston County medical facilities.
Openings exist, Graham said. But the industry requires a different skill set than in past decades.
"We rely on computers, we rely on things like global positioning systems," he said.
If construction trades require new skills, they also require new practitioners. Through its participating unions, the center is reaching out to women. It's also reaching out to returning military veterans through the national Helmets to Hardhats program.
Hundreds of high school and middle school students from throughout Michigan will visit the site for the annual Career Days program set for May 5-6.
That program offers hands on opportunity for the students, Graham said.
And maybe a look at their future.
Published: Mon, Mar 21, 2016
