Housing Complex: Training Day: If D.C. can get its people hired at the feds’ St. E’s, its own projects should be a snap.

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Excerpt:

What’s supposed to make St. Elizabeths work better than other projects is the Building Futures pre-apprenticeship program, funded by a $1.3 million grant from GSA and administered by the AFL-CIO. It’s a six-week training course that includes construction math, blueprint reading, and site visits—and practice showing up five days a week at 8 a.m.

The last class graduated this Tuesday at a ceremony in Congress Heights. Many of the graduates knew what trade they wanted to enter, from sheet metal to electrical work; all seemed upbeat about their prospects. “I feel like the Kobe Bryant of construction workers,” says Willie Hall, a Ward 8 resident who wanted to use the course to get out of data-entry jobs and become a carpenter.