MnDOT introduces students to construction careers

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Gathering on a sun-splashed parking lot at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds on Wednesday morning, a group of curious high school students stared wide-eyed at a bright yellow Minnesota Department of Transportation vehicle and peppered the operator with questions.

How old is that truck? How much did it cost? What does it do?

Tracy Nohrenberg, the veteran MnDOT truck operator, told the students from the Hmong College Prep Academy in St. Paul that the “Snooper” vehicle in question comes in handy for everything from bridge repairs to inspections.

Informed that the sparkling clean eight-axle truck is nearly 20 years old and costs in the neighborhood of $1 million, the duly impressed students responded with raised eyebrows and a chorus of “whoa.”

“Twenty years? It still looks brand new,” one student replied.

The students were among the participants in the inaugural Construction Career Day at the fairgrounds. MnDOT presented the event in partnership with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Transportation Studies.

About 125 metro area students in grades 8-12 attended the all-day event. It was designed to expose young men and women to career opportunities in construction, with a specific focus on transportation infrastructure.

“We wanted to engage students and create some interest and intrigue about what transportation careers look like,” Kim Collins, director of MnDOT Office of Civil Rights, said at Wednesday’s gathering.

Gina Baas, associate director of engagement and education for the Center for Transportation Studies, said the Construction Career Day is unusual because of its emphasis on transportation.

“Other events of this type tend to be focused more on vertical construction,” Baas said. “This one is really focused on highway-heavy, on roads and bridges, the transportation system. It’s really designed to show the career opportunities both in the public sector and the private sector.”

Career opportunities abound in both vertical and horizontal construction, which is mired in an ongoing labor shortage.

In Minnesota, 73 percent of those who responded to a recent Associated General Contractors survey said they are having a hard time filling positions. Roughly eight in 10 said it will “continue to be hard” or will “become harder” to hire workers in the coming year.

With shindigs like the Construction Career Day, MnDOT and others with a stake in horizontal construction are trying to woo a new generation of workers — and impress upon the high schoolers that building roads and bridges and operating equipment is more than just grunt work.

“Part of my message to this group is, the transportation industry in general is very sophisticated,” Collins said. “It is driven by innovation and technology.”

From Nohrenberg’s inspection vehicle with a seven-figure price tag to high-tech dump trucks equipped with laser beams, students got a first-hand look at some of the tools and equipment of the modern construction industry.

Alex Bruch, a coordinator at MnDOT’s Road Weather Technology department, showed off a MnDOT dump truck with a snow plow attachment. In the winter, the $250,000 truck carries up to 24,000 pounds of road salt, he said.

But it doesn’t just blindly dump the salt. Bruch directed the kids’ attention to a sensor attached to the side-view mirror. The sensor measures how hot or cold the pavement is, and how much salt should be used on the road — or whether it should be used at all.

Such intelligence takes the guesswork out of a process that may seem random to most people, Bruch said.

At other exhibits, students learned about safety equipment, inspected a trench box, took the wheel at simulator station for truck drivers, and discovered how MnDOT uses drones for bridge inspections.

In tune with her audience, a MnDOT representative likened drone operation to playing a PlayStation or an Xbox game. But she hastened to add that drones come with a whole set of rules to follow when used for business purposes.

Roughly 30 to 40 students from the Hmong College Prep Academy signed up to attend Construction Career Day, said Nick Fabeck, a group leader from the school.

Fabeck said the event was useful because it enabled students to meet experts in the field, learn more about what workers do in the field, and find out what it takes to follow that career path.

“There are all these different avenues you can take for success — trade schools, going into the service, going to college, community college. What does that look like for you and what best works for you?” he said.

“Hopefully the kids will develop that sense of where they want to go and how to get there.”

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