At Carolinas AGC, we have it going on for you! Did you know:
- We have 830 registrants signed up for next week’s 2023 Summer Summit & Expo, marking record-setting attendance for what is widely considered to be the premier annual construction event in the Carolinas.
- So far in 2023, we have 100+ new member companies joining our CAGC family, taking advantage of the value we offer and continuing to build our influence for our government relations programs in North and South Carolina as well as D.C.
- Our CAGC Young Leader program has grown to almost 250 members. This program, helping shape the future of our industry, gives your young employees a place to build and gain new leadership skills and meet other young professionals in the industry, including our YL Conference this fall.
- We are in excellent financial shape with strong oversight of CAGC by our Board of Directors and our CAGC Foundation by our Board of Trustees. Also, this year our BOD approved a wide-ranging, 5-year strategic plan to help guide us through 2028.
- Our Annual Winter Convention and Summer Summit & Expo in the next 3 years will take us to Asheville, St. Thomas, Myrtle Beach, Charleston, Hilton Head, Myrtle Beach and Aruba.
What CAGC is doing about the industry’s biggest challenge – the workforce shortage:
- CAGC was instrumental in Be Pro Be Proud SC receiving $500,000 dollars from the SC General Assembly in this year’s budget AND in securing this amount as a recurring line item in the budget for next year and subsequent years; funding also is continuing for two BPBP trucks in NC.
- We recently secured $45,000 in grant funding from the Black & Decker Foundation to partner with Clemson University on a construction education awareness initiative. The funding will be used to evaluate existing gaps and student access to construction education in three high schools located in upstate South Carolina. Funding will also be used to host a “Hard Hat Field Day” on October 27th in Greenville, SC.
- We hired 4 new staff members for CAGC Foundation – workforce development, education/training and grants. It is exciting watching this strong new team helping with training and helping place talented people in well-paying construction careers.
- In NC, we secured $7.2 million in funding included in the House version of the state budget for construction workforce initiatives. We are working on what hopefully will be final approval.
- CAGC also worked to secure $90 million in funding for workforce scholarships from the SC General Assembly for high-demand fields of study at the 16 technical colleges in SC. Construction, welding, and commercial truck driving are all considered high demand fields and this funding allows for students seeking these certifications to obtain them at no cost.
- We started 9 construction bootcamps at community colleges enrolling 97 students so far in NC and we hosted Construction Business Academies in Charlotte and Greensboro – graduating 33 students, with others planned in Raleigh and elsewhere across the state.
- We have offered 19 trainings in the last 4 months, March – June; our Grants, Education, Training and Workforce Development Team has 26 classes coming up and our new CAGC Construction Bootcamp site is up and running.
- We are partnering with the NC Military Business Center, NC State University, Clemson University and The Diversity Movement to offer a variety of training to our members.
What’s new at CAGC:
- We’re exploring the potential of offering a group health plan to our employer members to help lower costs. The response has been extremely positive, and we have enough interest to begin requesting group rates from an insurance provider. It’s not too late to sign up and you are not obligated to anything by doing so:
- We’ve added new Community Impact Awards to our dozens of Pinnacle, Hall of Fame/Legacy, Top Young Leader, Safety and AGC & ARTBA Awards.
- We’ve created a CAGC Council on Women in Construction (with a male co-chair and a female co-chair).
Networking & Marketing:
- We’ve repeatedly sold out many of our 2023 luncheons / networking events, including our upcoming 14th Annual Sporting Clays Benefit.
- Our marketing accomplishments in the first six months of 2023 saw significant increases in our digital media efforts including an almost 10% increase in web traffic, 5% increase in our email marketing open rate, and average monthly impressions of 15,000 on LinkedIn and 10,000 on Facebook.
- We’ve established 4 social media profiles (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn) that will highlight/promote company and community college partnerships with the construction bootcamps.
- Our HR/Safety Conference in March drew nearly 150 attendees, a record.
- We’ve had strong turnouts for our SC Legislative Day in January in Columbia, our NC Legislative Day in April and our Young Leader NC Legislative Day in May, with a SC Young Leader Legislative Day planned for this fall.
- This summer we will begin work in pumping new blood into our CAGC Boards & Committees for 2024.
Additional Government Relations & Safety Efforts:
No other construction association in the Carolinas has 4 lobbyists working in Columbia and Raleigh, with weekly legislative updates when the state legislatures are in session, as well as national staff in DC working for you via AGC of America and ARTBA.
It takes less than 30 seconds to send our CAGC prewritten message telling NC lawmakers to support funding to address critical construction workforce shortages across the state (details here).
SC’s legislative session is completed - click here for our end-of-session report.
Look in coming weeks for the NC General Assembly to end its so-called short session and we will let you know what you need to know in our session wrap-up.
Finally, concerning safety, our regular committee meetings are drawing big crowds at a time when the media continue to reach to CAGC on safety issues such as the recent apartment construction fire in Charlotte (video).