An icon of the construction industry that reports having a staff of 10,000 employees and completing $12 billion of construction on 1,500 projects each year is joining with Westchester County”™s Office of Economic Development and SUNY Westchester Community College (WCC) to bring its Turner School of Construction Management to Westchester.
The Turner School of Construction Management has visited various cities nationally offering a free educational program to qualified operators of small, minority-owned, women-owned, disadvantaged and veteran-owned businesses. It”™s designed to reach small-business leaders who have been working as general contractors, subcontractors, construction managers, construction consultants and individuals who work closely with construction management firms.
The Turner School immerses participants in the real world of construction management and is different from workforce development programs that offer training in skills such as plumbing and electrical work.
The twice-weekly evening classes will run from six to eight weeks at WCC and are scheduled to begin on Sept. 27.
Turner Construction Company is known for contributing its talents to building such landmarks as the United Nations Secretariat, passenger terminals at JFK International Airport, LaGuardia Airport and O”™Hare International, Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium, USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Arthur Ashe Stadium, 19 of the world”™s 100 tallest buildings and fairly recently the new White Plains Hospital Center for Advanced Medicine & Surgery.
Turner”™s team working on the 250,000-square-foot nine-story White Plains Hospital project celebrated the topping out milestone of the building on Feb. 24, 2020, by hoisting the final steel beam with Turner, American and White Plains Hospital flags attached to it two days ahead of schedule. A ribbon cutting for the new building was held on June 2, 2021.
Janice Haughton, community and citizenship director for Turner who oversees the Turner School of Construction Management, told the Business Journals, “The point is to provide contractors and business owners with courses in topics that are relevant to them and also will help them scale their business and help them grow.”
She said that safety, a huge subject in the construction industry, is covered along with law, sales, responding to requests for proposals, bidding for jobs and more.
“Some of our feedback shows that taking the courses helps small emerging businesses to understand what it”™s going to take to do contracting work in the bigger arenas, what it”™s going to take to have their businesses armed to work with large general contractors and construction managers,” Haughton said. “A lot of our graduates use their graduation certificates from Turner School to assist with their certification applications. Many of these firms are either M/WBE (Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise) certified or in the process of getting certified as well as veteran-owned businesses and our course helps to provide some of that documentation and experience that they need to show on those applications to get certified with various agencies.”
Haughton said that attending the course sessions allows the participants to network, build relationships and share opportunities.
“There could be spaces for these firms to work together on pursuits so it also provides them with a few weeks of networking with several other entrepreneurs that move in their same space and they have an opportunity to meet other businesses that they can work with after they finish Turner School,” Haughton said. “What makes our program special is the amount of time that Turner has been around; we”™ve been around for 120 years.”
She said that these courses are not focused on how to work with Turner.
“This is information that these businesses are going to need whether they work with us or they work with another company,” Haughton said. “We”™re providing them with meaningful experiences and tools that they can then take with them and apply to any company that they intend to work with.”
Haughton said that the school allows the Turner employees who do the teaching opportunities to give back to the community and industry.
“We get to share real-life experiences that these people need to know if they”™re going to work in this business,” Haughton said. “On the flip side, we need these firms; we need these innovative entrepreneurs to bring value to our project teams because we”™re looking to grow our own network and provide opportunities for local small business to benefit from the economic opportunities that our projects provide.”
Bridget Gibbons, director of Westchester County”™s Office of Economic Development, told the Business Journals that bringing the Turner School to Westchester dovetails nicely with other programs the county has implemented such as incubators to help new businesses develop, opportunities improve workforce skills and encouragement of small businesses.
“The construction industry is so important to Westchester”™s economy we want to do whatever we can to make it more accessible,” Gibbons said. “We already have successful workforce programs providing apprenticeships and skills development. The Turner School of Construction Management takes construction education to a new level.”
Charles McGinnes, assistant dean, workforce development at WCC told the Business Journals, “Aligning with the Turner School of Construction Management allows us here at SUNY Westchester Community College to bring in another focus area for minority and women-owned business and enterprises as well as it aligns pretty well with some of the entrepreneurial offerings that we”™ve been doing for small businesses, sole proprietorships and other business and industry partners here in our service area.”
McGinnes said the school offers courses in advanced manufacturing and there are some components that can cross over between manufacturing and construction. He said that they may be scheduling the Turner School sessions to take place in White Plains at the education and training center that WCC manages at Brookfield Commons in conjunction with the city of White Plains and the White Plains Housing Authority.
“We hope that this first iteration of the Turner School of Construction Management here in Westchester is very successful,” McGinnes said. “We”™ll look to offer it in the spring of 2023 again. I absolutely don”™t like doing ”˜one and done.”™ I like to have a good long-term collaboration because it”™s mutually beneficial. It provides Turner with a good outreach … and it provides our students with another unique opportunity that they may not have been able to realize had we not hosted this program.”
