… but it’s also quite reliable. unCommon Construction’s apprentice program has helped more than 300 students build 15 houses (and earn a collective $350k for their efforts) while building myriad hard and soft skills – and the confidence to bring them straight to the jobsite.
BY A.D. THOMPSON
Workforce development and retention woes are a hot topic these days. In fact – and we can pause here for what are likely the collective eye rolls of innumerable AGC members – workforce development and retention woes have been relevant for at least a decade.
Programs by the scads, we’ve reported on them, have proliferated, seeking high schoolers, even middle schoolers, with the potential to become the industry’s new blood. These have had varying degrees of success, which at times is a little confounding.
Construction is high paying. It’s exciting. It’s a field where for the foreseeable future, job security for quality candidates is all but guaranteed as the ranks of the trades slowly refill.
Many companies are more than willing to invest in talent that’s looking to advance, paying for higher education to groom the architects, engineers and executives of tomorrow. They offer seemingly infinite opportunities for technical skill building, free of charge.
So why aren’t young people interested in the trades?
“They are!” says Aaron Frumin. “Kids, especially young kids, are very interested in the trades!”
He serves up his two-year-old daughter as proof.
“I can’t count how many times she’s run to the window because a big truck is driving by. Or how curious she is about the tractors and the backhoes and cranes on every construction site we drive past. Kids are fascinated by the trades.”
Until, he says, someone teaches them not to be.
“Over the course of their development they are taught, implicitly or explicitly, that they shouldn’t pursue those careers because there are better jobs, or less strenuous jobs or jobs that are held in higher prestige….”
It seems preposterous on many levels. For one, “the construction industry is the backbone of the American economy,” he points out, noting that these vocations were one of a scant few deemed “essential” during the pandemic.
On a personal one, however, it was in part the strenuousness of Frumin’s first day laboring on a construction site, that knocked him out of what he refers to as his “quarter-life crisis,” and on the path that led him to found unCommon Construction, a New Orleans-based nonprofit that uses the build process to empower youth with the skills, the net- work experience and the resources to enter the workforce.
Now, roughly a decade into its run, unCommon’s student constructors, more than 300 thus far, have had their hands in building 15 houses, earning not only high school credit while doing so, but collectively more than $350,000 in pay. Revenue from each project matches apprentice earnings, funding equity award scholarships that will further the students’ education and/or career opportunities.
And it all started when Frumin became a college dropout.
The son of a doctor and a teacher, Frumin always knew he’d go to college and the San Diego native did well there, matriculating up north at the University of California at Davis. But although he was on track to graduate early with a strong GPA, “I had no idea what I was going to go on to do. I was really scared to be out in the world making my own way.”
He left school in his junior year to focus and not long after found purpose in the wake of a disaster.
“I called the Red Cross to make a $25 donation after Hurricane Katrina and it occurred to me that I had time and experience …. So, I asked to sign up for a shift to volunteer.”
The experience was catalyzing. Frumin went to the Gulf region for a three-week stint and while there, learned of other opportunities to help. But before the next phase began, he had some time, and took a gig on a construction site in the Reno-Tahoe area.
“There was mental and physical rigor. There was math and reading and social engineering, more in one day than many jobs experience all year. I was making good money. I was outside. I was doing this while the rest of my friends were graduating from college and entering the job market at a time when the recession was looming.” Fast forward and Frumin, back in New Orleans, headed into a year-long stint with AmeriCorps, during which time he worked with several nonprofits, including Habitat for Humanity, which hired him at the close of his service.
“I was there for three plus years and got really involved,” he says. “And I learned I was really good at building houses with unskilled labor. And the process was the mission. The better and faster I got at building houses with people who didn’t know what they were doing, the faster we could move people back into houses after the storm.”
Another thing he got from AmeriCorps was an education award. Recognizing his knack for teaching, he used the award to finish his undergraduate studies at Tulane University, then applied for Teach for America, which matches candidates they deem “future leaders” with two-year teaching jobs in low-income schools.
Frumin was sent to a Colorado middle school, where he taught reading and social studies.
“A three-week Red Cross deployment had led me here,” he marvels. The experience moved him closer to the ideology that would become unCommon.
“I found that the traditional classroom didn’t work for me,” he admits. “And it wasn’t working for a lot of the kids, either.” Melding the two post-college experiences, he had a revelation.
“I thought, if I could do anything, I’d build houses with high school students and use the profits to pay for scholarships for the kids who build the houses.”
And now, that’s exactly what he does.
Exceptionally notable, however, are the “soft skills” student apprentices learn while on the job with unCommon, which contractors actually consider more valu- able than whether a student is solid with a hammer and saw.
“Employers, especially those in and around the construction industry, need stronger entry-level employees who demonstrate that they can problem-solve, collaborate, communicate, and that they have social awareness, ” says Frumin. “They tell me, ‘Show me someone like that, and I can train them in the technical skills.’”
Real-world learning environments, too, are essential.
“Here, workplace expectations are authentically replicated while providing context for classroom content,” he explains.
It’s a curriculum that is nationally recognized for innovations in the education system and the workforce development landscape by Forbes, the Mike Rowe Works Foundation and many others.
Big names notwithstanding, the real proof of the program’s worth lies with its alumni.
Case in point, 23-year-old New Orleans native Joshua Bolds, who at 18 began a two-semester stint as a student apprentice after hearing about the program from a friend.
Bolds is something of a legacy, the last three generations of his family have been contractors and landscapers. He’s always been the handy sort, but unCommon’s real-world training was a major level-up. “It was amazing,” says Bolds. “Being able to build a whole house from the ground up was an experience in itself, but then to be able to share that, to be out there building and working with other people toward a bigger goal, there was just a real ‘togetherness.’ It was a great experience.” The $400-500-a-month stipend didn’t hurt, either. Nice scratch for a high-schooler. Bolds laughs.
“I wasn’t complaining.”
Frumin says Bolds was a rock star: Interested and curious, he took to it like a duck to water.
It was with similar enthusiasm that Bolds entered the workforce as a carpenter for two-time AGC of America Build America Award-winner Ryan Gootee General Contractors, a Louisiana AGC Chapter member. It was a job he held for three years. “And while he was doing that,” Frumin notes, “the company – which is a large firm here, they build hotels and casinos – supported him going to school part-time to study construction as he thought about getting a general contractor’s license.”
Bolds founded Boundless Task Force LLC as a weekend business in 2019, doing landscaping and fencing. He’s since expanded into concrete, Bobcat work, clearing lots, building sheds and decks. It is a full-time job the young CEO hopes will lead to more full-time jobs as his company grows.
“I would love to grow the company to where it is bigger, like in the subcontractor sense or even general contractor, where just like in high school, I am building houses from the ground up,” says Bolds. “I’d like to have a crew. I’d like to invest in real estate. I’d like to travel and see things.”
unCommon is among the licensed and insured residential GCs and developers that hire Boundless Task Force. He is a success story Frumin says represents the program’s “virtuous cycle.”
“Now that he’s several years out of the program, our current apprentices can see what’s possible in his story.”
unCommon has now crossed state lines even as it builds its HQ in New Orleans. With three partner schools in Minneapolis, Frumin would like to see it stretch even further.
“Our biggest vision is a world where every jobsite everywhere has someone on it or connected to it who is engaged with unCommon, either as a youth participant or an adult industry partner.”
There are so many ways AGC members can partner with unCommon, locally if it operates in a contractor’s market, as well as national companies for support. Wolverine and Procore are two such organizations.
In 2021, unCommon’s apprentices designed a work boot with the Wolverine design team.
“This is the largest non-athletic footwear company in the world,” Frumin notes. “And every one of our apprentices received a free pair of work boots at a $150 value, so they can literally take their first step into the industry with confidence.” It’s a nice narrative that plays into unCommon’s overall vision: a world where everyone has a clear path to a meaningful and rewarding work life.
“And our special way of getting there happens to be with jobs and careers that begin on or around a construction site.” Frumin wasn’t from a low-income family, but there are parallels in the circuitous path by which he found his calling.
“I was a college dropout,” he notes. And it was in part his exposure to a high-wage, in-demand job – one that didn’t require him to have a four-year degree – that helped crystallize his goals in ways that school didn’t.
Similarly, unCommon has found a way to understand what some students aren’t getting from their education experience, and what they can offer to light them up inside, to get up early on a weekend to go build a house.
“It’s not like kids don’t know there are jobs in construction,” says Frumin. “But some really need to see it and experience it. It needs to be really authentic.”
WANT TO LEARN MORE?
Interested in learning more about unCommon Construction and how you can become involved? Visit https://uncommonconstruction.org/.