EAST MOLINE, Ill. — Carpenters in the Quad Cities region are now better able to prepare for a career in the trades with the opening of a new training facility in East Moline.
The 55,000 square foot facility for future carpenters provides a space for four-year programs that include construction, welding, cutting, as well as blueprint reading.
"We're looking at decades of being here and representing the community," Executive Director of Apprentice Training Programs Craig Triplett said.
Triplett said they designed the multi-million dollar building with one goal in mind.
"To learn a little bit about every aspect of construction and that way they're a well routed carpenter," Triplett said. "They might be able to work on a bridge, interior systems in a hospital. They can work on the solar fields that are coming up and a mass timber high rise building."
One of these students putting hammer to nail is Cody Werderman, who is nearing the end of his apprenticeship program. He said the need for carpenters locally will always be there.
"It seems good, like there's like a high demand for what we're doing right now so some people can kind of get worried about, you know, having too many people," Werderman said. "But it seems like we're looking for people and wanna expand and just as a worker myself, I could use some good people for our company."
And who better to help build areas of the facility along the way than the students themselves.
"All of our local contractors, we all just put our bids in on it.," Werderman said. "A lot of us got to come in and do our different stuff so it's pretty cool. You see what everybody else can do and then you can come back every time from what you've done."
Werderman also said the pride from building something that will last for decades is a novelty of the job.
The building also joined with the Millwrights Training Center to help teach new students.
The Mid-America Carpenters Regional Council represents more than 53,000 workers across 324 counties in Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Eastern Iowa.