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Ohio Millwright

Army Engineer uses Millwright Skills to Help Rebuild the Middle East

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Ohio Millwright

IKORCC & Local 1090 member SSG Arthur utilizes skills learned from his millwright apprenticeship to help soldiers and civilians working in Afghanistan.

The Indiana/Kentucky/Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters is proud to work with our nation’s military veterans. Veterans like Local 1090’s SSG Jamie Arthur, who is currently stationed overseas with the Army’s 486th Engineer Company out of Monclova, Ohio.

SSG Arthur is using skills learned as a UBC Millwright to build relocatable buildings, essentially connex container housing units. His work helps give more housing options to military and civilians who work in the Middle East.

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Cincinnati Carpenters Help Orphans

Locals 2 & 1090 Help Orphans at Christmas

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Cincinnati Carpenters Help OrphansThis holiday season Locals 2 and 1090 in Cincinnati made sure no child was left behind. As part of their ongoing partnership with St. Joseph’s Orphanage, IKORCC carpenters and millwrights made sure kids in the home had something to wake up to this Christmas.

The orphanage often gets toy donations for the younger kids but struggles when it comes to making teens’ wishes come true. That’s where IKORCC members stepped in to help. Locals 2 and 1090 donated a total of $1,000 to help.

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Rossford Campus Wins Veteran’s Award

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Rossford Carpenters win awardThe Rossford IKORCC campus works hard to honor military veterans. This year that hard work helped them win a national award from the Veterans Health Administration for their Community Partnership Challenge. The Rossford campus partnered with the Toledo V.A. Clinic for the Helmets to Hardhats program. Helmets to Hardhats helps military veterans get back to work quickly after service.

“These veterans tend to be natural leaders and end up as foremen and superintendents. As they go through their careers, they bring more veterans in. We’d like to have a nice flow of veterans coming into our program every year,” said Mike Gibson, a senior representative at the Rossford campus.

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2020 Training Center Open House – Save the Date

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Carpenters Partner with Ronald McDonald Houses

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The Indiana/Kentucky/Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters is proud to have a partnership with seven Ronald McDonald Houses across Indiana, Kentucky & Ohio. What started as building the houses has turned into much more in our efforts to build communities. Check out all the smiles and history of the IKORCC’s partnership with Ronald McDonald Houses.

Open Houses Bring 6,000 Students to IKORCC

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6,000 – that’s the number of people who attended IKORCC open houses in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. In a whirlwind month of open houses,  high school students and community leaders visited training centers in Greenwood, Warsaw, Terre Haute, Newburgh, Merrillville, Louisville, Grayson, Columbus, Monroe, Rossford, and Richfield.

 “I was considering becoming an electrician, but after I learned about the millwrights I changed my mind. I can’t wait to get started,” a high school senior at the Merrillville, Indiana open house said.

This high school senior summed it up perfectly. At the Indiana Kentucky Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters we know that once students see our training in-person and learn more about the program, joining the apprenticeship is a no-brainer.

Students Get Hands-On Experience

Students particularly enjoyed the hands-on activities including virtual welding, nail challenge, and the floor covering challenge. Next year training centers plan to add a hands-on ICRA (Infection Control Risk Assesment) challenge which will teach students the importance of using barriers during construction in medical facilities to protect patients.

According to the Department of Labor, careers in skilled trades like carpentry, flooring, and welding are in high demand and the need for skilled workers will continue to rise with coming infrastructure improvements. This fact was evident in Grayson, Kentucky on Thursday when over 1,200 students visited the Grayson, Kentucky training center open house.

High Demand Jobs in Skilled Trades Help Boost Attendance

Over 30 busses lined the drive to the Grayson, Kentucky training center where students learned about our apprenticeship, participated in hands-on activities and met with contractors ready-to-hire.

“We have a great partnership with all of the local schools and a lot of people in Grayson work in the trades, so students understand the great life they can have with a career in our trades. Getting them out here to see it first-hand solidifies that idea and gets them ready to start their apprenticeship right after high school,” says IKORCC Senior Business Representative Jerry Yates.

Richfield, Ohio also had a very large turnout with 1100 attendees getting to see additional areas of our crafts, including millwork, pile driving, cabinetry, furniture making, stairs, and ceiling work.

“Work is so good here and word of that really alerts people to the fact that there are bonafide opportunities here. In this part of Ohio, we’ve got the majority of Ohio’s career connection partner schools, and these schools want their students to see what the next step is and that is our apprenticeship,” says Dan Sustin, training director for the Richfield Carpenters Training Center Campus.

 

Thank you to all the students, teachers, community leaders, politicians, vendors, contractors, and staff that helped make this year our most successful yet! Check out all the photos & videos from each open house by following the links below:

Indiana

Greenwood Carpenters Training Center

Merrillville Carpenters Training Center

Newburgh Carpenters Training Center

Terre Haute Carpenters Training Center

Warsaw Carpenters Training Center

Kentucky

Louisville Carpenters Training Center

Grayson Carpenters Training Center

Ohio

Columbus Carpenters Training Center

Monroe Carpenters Training Center

Richfield Carpenters Training Center

Rossford Carpenters Training Center

 

Learn more about our apprenticeship and how to apply here. 

Apprentice Spotlight: Savannah Engelman Forges Her Own Path

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Savannah Engelman Signing DaySavannah Engelman, named after her grandpa’s favorite fishing spot, is an ambitious, young apprentice rising quickly. Savannah, a Spencer, Ohio native, is a carpentry apprentice at the Richfield Training Center and is only 18 years old. Her parents, in conjunction with the high school and Lorain County JVS, worked with the Richfield Training Center to get her enrolled in the apprenticeship program.

Savannah toured Lorain County JVS as a freshman and felt blown away by all the career choices she had. The tour showed she had many possible career paths. Savannah is an honors student and most people in her life believed she would attend a traditional college after high school.

Some teachers even tried to discourage her from leaving that path to find her own. Thanks to her strong will and supportive parents, Savannah tried four trades for a preliminary period and fell in love with carpentry. Savannah’s mom marched to the school and advocated on her behalf to sign for enrollment in the carpentry program at Lorain County JVS.

Savannah is very organized. Before graduation, her typical week had her fluctuating between high school, JVS, apprenticeship, work, and clubs. She’s also perfecting her cabinet making skills and participated at the state level in the Skills USA competition. Her high school and JVS work together to help Savannah make up hours when she is in the apprenticeship.

“Savannah has completed three classes so far at Richfield and not only has perfect attendance and a 4.0 GPA, but has a great attitude that proves to be contagious in each class she takes. We are looking at an apprentice that is going places,” says Dan Sustin, training coordinator at the Richfield Carpenters Training Center.

Savannah also works two days a week as an intern for RGI where, among other things, she cut all the pieces of the toolbox kits for IKORCC’s event at the Ronald McDonald House of Cleveland. She likes the flexibility of RGI but would eventually like to work outside. With RGI for Safety Week, Savannah helped build a replica of a fire station.

When she graduated high school this May, she was well on her way to finishing her first year of apprenticeship. So far, Savannah has completed Hand and Power Tools, Metal Studs & Drywall, and is about to start Concrete Footers & Wall Forms. She says she loves the Richfield Center.

“He’s encouraging and answers every question with no judgment. He was instrumental in getting me organized with all of my school this year,” Savannah says of Dan Sustin.

A wild Friday night for Savannah includes baking chocolate chip cookies (what she was doing as we talked) and meeting up with her boyfriend to muck horse stalls together. If that doesn’t say romance, I don’t know what does. When she does have free time, Savannah likes to go camping with her family at Wills Creek near Coshocton, Ohio.

Savannah’s ambition will serve not just her, but all of us. She is just one example of the extremely talented apprentices at the Indiana Kentucky Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters.

Building Healthcare Partners at AIA Ohio Conference

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In early October 2018, the Indiana Kentucky Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters (IKORCC) was a Platinum Sponsor at the AIA Ohio Convention in Toledo, Ohio. AIA Ohio is part of the elite society of the American Institute of Architects. The society shares similar concentrations to the IKORCC. Both organizations are working to produce positive legislative and governmental development in licensing requirements and construction appropriations.

IKORCC’s very own, Jay Patz, Instructor from Northwest Indiana, spoke in a breakout session highlighting ICRA patient safety in facilities. Jay shared astonishing statistics from the Centers for Disease Control regarding hospital associated infections. Those statistics included information about patients who survived infection to those infections that led to death. Within the scope of those statistics, 5,000 of patients lost their lives due to a construction related hospital associated infection.  

It is IKORCC’s goal to open the line of communication for pre-planning opportunities. Jay showed that this level of communication will allow for patient safety to be the number one priority, and increase the effectiveness of the architect and workers on the jobsite.

Keynote Speaker, Coren Sharples, founding partner of SHoP Architects, wowed her audience with new unconventional ways to approach design. Her designs focus on the beautifully practical. The future holds learning opportunities for IKORCC apprentices and the Council at large. The convention was capped with many educational avenues with which the Council can engage.

Carpenters Help Portsmouth Family Build Future

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Carpenters not only helped build a home in Portsmouth last weekend, they also helped a family build a solid foundation for their future. 

Nearly a dozen members of Carpenter’s Local 437 helped Scioto County Habitat for Humanity build a home for a family in Ohio. Carpenters set the trusses and completed the roof in only five hours!

“When God blesses you with a skill, it’s always good to bless back,” says member Mike Slack Sr., who ventured out of retirement to lend a hand to his local.

Member and Indiana Kentucky Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters Business Agent Trampas Puckett said, “Carpenters are all about building our communities, this was a perfect way to help a deserving family build their future.”

The Scioto County Habitat for Humanity thanked the carpenters. “A very special thank you to the local Carpenters Union #437 for putting in a long, hot day helping us.”

Habitat for Humanity Nail It Competition of Southeast Ohio

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Last month, IKORCC members created a team to participate in the 3rd Annual Habitat for Humanity Nail It Competition of Southeast Ohio. The Nail It Competition is a nail-biting race to see what team can drive nails the fastest. Each team member must drive two nails into a piece of wood relay style. Our fast and hardworking IKORCC team finished first place with a time of 23 seconds!

Local 356 in Marietta, Ohio was represented by Brent Hensley (Journeyman) and Tyler Welch (Apprentice). Local 650 in Pomeroy, Ohio was represented by Kill Wells (Journeyman) and Luke Fackler (Apprentice). The team was funded by donations of their locals, collecting a total of $1,000! The event raised a total of $7,000 dollars between all 25 teams. The money collected from the teams goes to support Habitat for Athens County and the work they do in the community.