Worker attraction and retention is a well-known problem in the roofing industry. According to a survey conducted by The Associated General Contractors of America and Autodesk, 86% of construction firms said they had a difficult time filling craft positions, with 61% of those firms indicating they had a difficult time finding roofing workers in 2023. And 68% of respondents said their difficulties stemmed from available job candidates not being qualified to work because of a lack of skills or other reasons.
From targeting young students just entering the workforce to helping qualified workers certify their skills, NRCA works to combat the industry’s labor shortages in a variety of ways.
Starting early
With so many ways to join the workforce—whether through a four-year college, trade school or a different path—it can be stressful for students and young adults to decide the career they want to pursue. NRCA helps make sure these young people are exposed to roofing as a career option.
SkillsUSA®
One of these efforts is NRCA’s involvement with SkillsUSA, a partnership of educators and trade industries aiming to prepare middle school, high school and college students for careers in trade, technical and skilled service occupations.
With more than 330,000 active SkillsUSA students and teachers in the U.S., students compete in a series of regional contests that culminate at a national championship contest.
Founded in the 1960s, SkillsUSA did not include roofing until 2022, when NRCA and its partners worked with the organization to create a robust roofing contest. The new national contest, Commercial Roofing, involves students installing TPO membrane over the same mockup NRCA uses for its PROCertification® exam for thermoplastic roof system installers.
Sherri Miles, vice president of J.D. Miles & Sons Inc., Chesapeake, Va., is commercial roofing state chair for SkillsUSA Virginia and the Virginia state chair for NRCA’s national efforts. Miles says once she experienced the scale of the SkillsUSA national competition and the passion of the students, parents and instructors in attendance, it was clear how important it is for roofing to have a presence at the competition alongside the other showcased trades.
LEARN MORE
NRCA urges you to become involved with its worker outreach efforts by exploring the following options:
Education
Clemson University courses:
cpe.clemson.edu/browse/clemsoncpe
CTE school search tool:
nrca.net/cteschools
NCCER Roofing curriculum:
nccer.org/craft-catalog/roofing
TRAC packages:
nrca.net/education/trac
Competitions
SkillsUSA:
nrca.net/workforce-development/skillsusa
The Roofing Alliance’s Construction Management Student Competition:
roofingalliance.net/education-research/student-competition
Skill certification
PROCertification:
nrca.net/procertification
“[Roofing] needs to not be a fallback job choice because nothing else panned out,” Miles says. “Roofing needs to be an aspirational career and right in front of prospective future employees. SkillsUSA is a great first step and platform to get in front of kids when they are thinking about their next steps.”
Contractors can get involved in SkillsUSA by donating funds or materials for the national championship at skillsusa.org. To learn how to become a SkillsUSA coach, contact John Esbenshade, NRCA’s director of workforce development, at jesbenshade@nrca.net.
CTE schools
To further expose students in high school and college to roofing, NRCA partnered with the Association for Career and Technical Education to support increased funding of career and technical education programs.
Students enrolled in CTE schools specialize in a specific trade, such as carpentry, nursing or cosmetology, or explore several simultaneously. NRCA’s website, nrca.net, features search engines for individuals to find a nearby roofing contractor or roofing contractors to find a CTE school in their areas.
“CTE schools have served as pipelines for young people interested in careers in the trades for generations,” says John Esbenshade, NRCA’s director of workforce development. “Other trades have used CTE schools to recruit the next generation of leaders by providing training and long-term career options. Now, the roofing industry is working to do the same.”
TRAC
For new and inexperienced hires, NRCA offers Training for Roof Application Careers, an online-based training curriculum. Its contents introduce participants to terminology and conceptual understanding of roof systems.
“During TRAC development, we consider new roofing workers who are frustrated on jobs because they don’t know what they are expected to do and don’t have enough understanding to absorb what’s happening around them,” says Amy Staska, vice president of NRCA University. “The aim of TRAC is what we call ‘conversational competence.’”
Tim Stephens, vice president of operations at Architectural Sheet Metal Inc., Orlando, Fla., works with schools in Florida to establish the Florida SkillsUSA competition and take representatives to the national competition. He says he uses TRAC content as a way to prepare students for SkillsUSA, as well as part of his company’s onboarding process.
“TRAC does an outstanding job of introducing students to roofing materials, techniques and terminology. It is vital to give [SkillsUSA participants] a well-rounded grasp of everything involved with the competition while also building a great foundation for a future career,” Stephens says. “TRAC also offers a simple yet robust training platform that new employees gain great knowledge from. Good training is vital to employee retention.”
NRCA offers two courses, TRAC: Thermoplastic and TRAC: Asphalt Shingle, at no cost for any CTE school in the U.S.
Roofing Alliance
The Roofing Alliance also works hard to attract workers to the industry.
One of these is The Roofing Alliance’s Construction Management Student Competition, held each year during the International Roofing Expo,® which exposes construction management students to roofing as a career choice and allows participants to demonstrate their roofing knowledge of estimating, project management, safety and other job-related areas through written and oral presentations regarding an annual project. To read about former student competition participants’ success stories, see “Look, ma, I made it!”
However, to get students involved, educators need an opportunity to learn about roofing, as well. The Roofing Alliance offers its Faculty Retreat on Roofing for full-time faculty members of ACCE-accredited schools of construction management to learn about the roofing industry and roofing-specific issues, best practices and career opportunities. The retreat includes workshops about how to best engage and instruct students. Through the first two retreats held in 2022, 30 faculty members were introduced to the roofing industry, with many going on to integrate materials and classes about roofing into their curricula.
“Hosting the annual Faculty Retreat is paramount in cultivating a collaborative environment,” says Alison LaValley, NRCA’s vice president of strategic partnerships and development and the Roofing Alliance’s executive director. “It allows roofing professionals with a platform to share roofing-specific insights and best practices, implement roofing curriculum and provide career opportunities within the roofing industry to benefit their students.”
Additionally, the Roofing Alliance partnered with Clemson University’s Nieri Department of Construction, Development and Planning, Clemson, S.C., to create the Roofing Professional Management Certificate, a three-course, nine-credit program for construction management schools to expose roofing as a career option to students.
The courses, which are self-paced and available online, include Roofing Fundamentals, Roofing Management, and Roofing Business Principles and Leadership. They are tailored to educate not only college students but also industry professionals, office personnel, estimators, foremen, salespeople and new hires.
The Roofing Alliance and Clemson University teams currently are working to build a fourth course about sustainability and resiliency, which will allow students to take all four courses and one construction management elective at Clemson University to achieve a minor in roofing.
NCCER
Another NRCA partnership is with the National Center for Construction Education & Research. NCCER is a nonprofit educational foundation that develops standardized curricula and assessments with portable credentials and certifications for skilled construction professionals.
NCCER and NRCA members and staff, along with roofing subject matter experts, collaborated to create a comprehensive roofing curriculum related to all major roof systems installed in the U.S.
Consisting of two levels and offered as printed books and online modules, the NCCER Roofing curriculum helps roofing professionals prepare for NRCA PROCertification and complies with the Department of Labor’s standards for apprenticeship programs. It addresses foundational skills such as safety, drawings and substrates before covering steep- and low-slope roof systems.
“Fully trained workers are obviously beneficial, but the early exposure to a professional, full-fledged training system is just as powerful,” Staska says.
Certifying skills
NRCA PROCertification is NRCA’s national certification initiative, allowing experienced installers and foremen to become certified in specific roof system applications. Certifications available include:
Ninety-two percent of NRCA PROCertified installers remain with the company they were with at the time they earned their certifications. According to researchers at Harvard Business Review, employees who see clear career paths for themselves and feel committed to a company with a positive value system are less likely to leave their current company; workers stagnating in a role for 10 months raises the odds they will leave their company by about one percentage point.
“Contractors find when two or three crew members become PROCertified, the rest of the crew wants to raise their quality and take training seriously so they can get PROCertified as well,” says Jared Ribble, NRCA’s vice president of certifications. “The entire crew gets better.”
A skilled workforce
Whether it is through introducing the next generation to roofing or elevating the skills of those who already have begun their careers, NRCA is always working to bolster the roofing industry from every angle.
AVERY TIMMONS is Professional Roofing’s editorial assistant.
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