As demand for construction continues, the industry’s labor shortage unfortunately persists, too. Are contractors playing the short or long game with talent?

“Many contractors are in the short game — ‘I have a project going on, and I need the best, experienced people now,’” said Jennifer Wilkerson, Vice President of Innovations and Advancements for the National Center for Construction Education and Research. “The problem with that is if we don’t have the long game in place and we’re not ready to make sure that the next generation is going to come in, we see some of the issues that we’re seeing now.”

Wilkerson made her comments during the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) 2025 Annual Convention session titled “Winning the War on Talent.” The session highlighted the long-game efforts being carried out by Sundt and Kiewit. Featured here are some of the unique initiatives Sundt uses to attract and retain craft professionals, showing that construction can offer not just a job but a career.

James Busch, Sundt’s Craft Pipeline Manager, works to build pre-apprenticeship partnerships with high schools, community colleges, and other organizations in construction education.

“We invest in these programs, we help them build these programs, and then we recruit people out of those programs,” he said.

However, lack of awareness and misconceptions present ongoing challenges in attracting new people to the industry.

“We’ve come a long way,” Busch said. “But when I talk with young people getting ready to graduate high school or even a post-secondary program, they don’t have a strong message of the opportunities that a career in construction can provide, all the different facets and all the different jobs in construction.”

For instance, he related, “If I’m talking to a young person in a welding class and say, ‘Maybe you want to become a welder,’ they say, ‘Yeah, I like welding. I just don’t want to be a welder for the rest of my life.’”

Busch said that in reality, “The majority of our management team — including myself — and even some of our executives started off as craft professionals. They’ve continued to grow and build on their skill sets, and now they assist with running a very large, successful construction company.”

Once Sundt overcomes barriers in attracting new employees, they still deal with challenges in retaining them.

“The majority of our attrition happens in the first year of employment,” Busch said. “As we dug into what happened in that first year, we found that the majority of people are leaving due to life events outside of work.”

To deal with those issues, he said, “We try to be extremely flexible. We understand that life is not the same for everyone and different things happen. If somebody wants to go to another state, we try to transfer them from one project to another so we can retain them. When these life events come up, we look at how we can help so they can take care of that, then come back and be thinking about work and being safe.”

To help with retention, Sundt’s craft professionals receive similar benefits as the administrative team, including health and wellness, paid time off, holiday pay, and annual bonuses. At the AGC convention session, Sean Ray, Sundt’s Vice President of Craft Workforce Development, reiterated the importance of that.

“These craft professionals know they’re in high demand, and they want to be treated with respect,” he said. “You need to be looking at what you’re doing for your health, dental, vision, paid time off, bonuses. Is it up to par with the industry? When I was a journeyman, I couldn’t spell PTO, didn’t know what it was. But now you have to really look at things differently to stay competitive.”

As an employee-owned company, Sundt also offers an opportunity for every craft and administrative professional to own a piece of the company.

Beyond benefits, Busch said, “I think one incentive we’ve seen that’s even greater than the monetary reasons to stay is the investment we make in our people through training. We have apprenticeships available, we have skill upgrade training, we have leadership training. And not only do we have that available, but our employees never sacrifice anything to be part of that training. We offer it during regular work hours and all of it is paid.”

That training schedule is made possible by the support of not just Sundt’s executive leadership, but also the operational team.

“When they send them to us and we train them and they return to the job site, they see the difference,” Busch said. “They see them come back and be a better craft person after the training.”

The heart of the company’s training and development program is the Sundt Training Center and Center for Craft Excellence in Phoenix, Arizona. Completed in 2023, the campus includes indoor and outdoor spaces with equipment and technology for hands-on training of craft and administrative personnel.

“Having this facility has created opportunities for us. However, we’ve been doing this training for a very long time,” Busch said.

Sundt still conducts training at their job sites and utilizes space with community partners across the 20 states where they operate.

Approximately 170 apprentices are currently registered in the seven certified apprenticeship programs Sundt offers:

• Heavy equipment operation
• Heavy equipment technician
• Concrete construction
• Pipefitting
• Welding
• Construction laborer
• Industrial ironworker

Rather than running those programs through a third party, Busch said they have “full-time instructors focused solely on training.”

Sundt also offers mentorship opportunities throughout their apprenticeship and skills upgrade programs.

“Typically, once employees have gone through those programs, they want to stick around because they see a pathway to move forward and continue to grow in their skill sets,” Busch said.

In April 2025, Sundt was awarded a BuildItAZ Workforce Development grant for their first completely Spanish-language-delivered apprenticeship program, which starts in June 2025.

“The first one we’re offering is concrete construction, and then we’ll move into craft labor and some of the other programs we offer,” Busch said. “We hired a bilingual instructor, and as soon as people found out we had a Spanish-speaking apprenticeship, we got a lot of interest and a lot of people applying.”

Sundt also received the 2024 Workforce Development Program of the Year Award from the Southeastern Construction Owners & Associates Roundtable for their Fundamentals of Crew Leadership program. For that training, instructors travel to Sundt’s job sites.

“Project managers give up anywhere from 10 to 20 of their foremen for two days to go through this leadership training,” Busch said. “We talk about a lot of different topics, including communication and generational gaps, because a lot of times the foremen are in a different generational group than the craft people. We talk about mental wellness and financial wellness. We give them tools to go back and talk to these young people and say, ‘Hey, you’re making a really good salary. Let’s be responsible with that salary.’ We talk about our benefit package and how you’re an employee owner and why you should take pride in that.”

To expand awareness of construction career opportunities, Sundt works with many community organizations. For instance, their partnership with Central Arizona College in Coolidge, Arizona, dates back to 2017.

“We run multiple apprenticeship programs through there, we hire their students when they graduate, and we sit on their advisory board,” Busch said.

Sundt’s trainers are certified as adjunct instructors so they can help teach at the college. The company also donates tools and materials, and its craft professionals occasionally speak as guest lecturers.

“We try to be a true partner and be impactful in the areas where they need it the most,” Busch said. “Our secret sauce is that we don’t just cut a check then leave. We try to be involved as much as we can. Honestly, that sweat equity goes so much further than the dollar amount on a check.”

Sundt is starting similar partnerships with South Mountain Community College in Phoenix and Austin Community College in Austin, Texas.

In 2024, Sundt partnered with the Arizona Department of Education to bring high school counselors to the Phoenix training center.

“We put them on heavy equipment and had them do real, hands-on construction activities so they could take that back to the schools,” Busch said.

Afterward, many of the counselors asked Sundt personnel to come talk with their students and teachers. Busch has been working with the Department of Education on a repeat event scheduled for September 2025.

“Last year, we brought in 50 or 60 counselors, and they’re looking at closer to 100 this year,” he said. “Last year, they came from all over the state. They were willing to travel for the opportunity, which really means it brings value.”

Other community initiatives include bringing 200 Girl Scouts and their families to the training center each year to learn about a day in the life of construction, working with organizations that serve foster kids to increase awareness of construction career opportunities, and conducting onsite training for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and other Native American organizations.

“Wherever there’s an interest in construction education, we want to be there and shine a positive light on that,” Busch said.