A $4.8 million training facility planned for Kalihi is expected to help provide more construction job applicants amid a Honolulu building boom that has created a critical shortage of qualified workers in the trades.

The new Construction Training Center of the Pacific is being developed in a partnership between the city and the Building Industry Association of Hawai'i. The center will be built on Dillingham Boulevard next to the Blood Bank of Hawai'i, in part with a $2 million grant from the Economic Development Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

"Now that the construction industry is picking up steam, it has been projected that we'll need 10,000 to 26,000 more construction workers in the next few years," Mayor Mufi Hannemann said yesterday.

The training center will help prepare workers to enter apprenticeship programs to fill construction jobs.

Ramsey Pedersen, chancellor of Honolulu Community College, the primary training facility for the building trades, said having more qualified people coming into apprentice programs would be a huge benefit for the state.

"It's a capacity issue and they're helping to build capacity," Pedersen said. "To meet the construction needs they've branched out into giving people the basic skills to pass apprenticeship tests and apply for the apprenticeship positions in the union.

"They're trying to get more people into the pipeline. They recognize there's a great need."

Pedersen said that at this point, the community college is not doing pre-apprenticeship training to get people ready to apply for an industry.

"It's definitely a help," he said.

Building Industry Association chief executive officer Karen Nakamura said the center will provide academic, vocational, counseling, job placement and related support services "that address critical labor shortages in the state of Hawai'i."

Nakamura said the center could open by mid-2008.

"We hope to graduate at least 200 to 300 students in 2006. When the building is complete and in full swing, we expect to admit at least six classes a year of 20 to 35 students each," Nakamura said, with the potential to double the number of graduates each year.

Nakamura said the center also will be used for continuing education classes for workers in the building trades as well as for training new workers. The BIA will manage the center and has already begun developing partnerships with various community groups and organizations to develop programs, recruit students, offer scholarships and provide job placement.

She said the center is partnering with Pacific Gateway Center to reach out to recent immigrants.

The center is envisioned as a multilevel building with 23,000 square feet of interior space for a conference facility, classrooms, a computer lab, an industrial equipment training area and offices.

Hannemann said the city was able to help seek the federal grant but credited U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye with helping to secure it.

Nakamura said the association has raised about half of the $2 million needed to repay the loan toward its share of building the center.

FINDING GOOD PEOPLE

Besides HCC, construction training is also being provided in community schools, including McKinley and Farrington high schools, as well as at Hawai'i Pacific University, Nakamura said.

One of the primary concerns has been to develop enough workers to keep jobs in Hawai'i yet not produce so many that there's a glut later on, when the projected $10 billion boom slows.

Bernadette Howard, dean of transportation and trades programs at HCC, said creating the work force for the state is a complicated issue, especially as Hawai'i pushes to increase its overall capacity by as many as 10,000 to 15,000 workers in the next seven years.

"It's a matter of getting the good people in at the beginning and getting them well prepared," she said.

RETAINING APPRENTICES

One of the problems facing apprenticeship programs now is a loss of people in the middle of training, either because they decide they don't like it, or because they get another job and don't have time to complete the apprenticeship.

Even so, in the past five years Hawai'i has built its training capacity from about 990 people in apprenticeship programs to approximately 2,800 today. With training taking from three to five years, almost 500 apprentices are finishing each year, Howard said.

"Meeting this need is a real complex issue," Howard said. "It means a great many people coming together and getting the workforce trained to a level of competence we need to expect. With all the tremendous partnerships we have, we're trying to maximize and leverage all the federal money.

"All the agencies are charged with trying to get the programs to work better together."

Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com and Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com.