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Dao Huynh dropped his dream of becoming a doctor to pursue a career in construction. And he's glad he did.

photo by Mark Rhodes

"Now we make the best of our opportunities," says 28-year-old Huynh, who owns Richmond-based DND Services Inc., a company that designs software for construction companies. But this American dream didn't happen overnight. Huynh's mother, Xuan To, didn't speak much English, and she worked long hours cleaning houses. "She worked at $4-an-hour jobs," he says, recalling his family's early days in Richmond. Dieu Huynh, his father, grew Asian herbs to sell to local markets.

Huynh dreamed of becoming a doctor. Seven years after landing on U.S. soil, that dream was well on its way to reality. He studied biology, physics and calculus in high school, and during the summers he worked construction jobs to help support his family. His two older sisters, Dao (pronounced differently than his name) and Anhdai, worked as cosmetologists to help finance the younger siblings' education. "My sisters really sacrificed for us," says Huynh.

By the time his senior year rolled around, Huynh had been accepted into the Medical College of Virginia. "Even my Dad wanted me to become a doctor," he says. "But when my Dad returned from visiting his best friend in California, who owned a successful construction company, he said: ÔChange your major to construction.' And I did."

This fatherly advice proved valuable to Huynh and to the construction industry itself, which is facing a chronic shortage of workers. Far from being a career of last resort, the construction industry is becoming increasingly high-tech and offers secure, well-paying jobs that can lead to even better jobs.

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Unlike Dieu Huynh, many parents discourage their sons and daughters from pursuing careers in construction. This $650 billion industry is bursting with career opportunities but plagued by negative stereotypes and thousands of vacant jobs.

"Parents and society say that the American dream is college. ... They think that ... jobs in construction are for those who can't make it academically," says Mark Church, state director for Skills-USA (VICA), formerly known as the Virginia Association for Vocational Industrial Clubs of America. "That is a myth. Our jobs take heavy math skills. ... In 1982, 48 percent of our students took geometry; in '92, 70 percent did and back in '82, 33 percent took remedial math. Today less than 17 percent need that assistance."

According to Steve Vermillion, executive director of the Associated General Contractors of Virginia Inc., the construction industry employs about 200,000 people in Virginia and about 5.2 million workers nationwide. "It's estimated that about one-third of these workers will retire in the next 10 years, plus it's estimated that overall demand for skilled workers will increase by about a half million during this period," he says. "Nationally, we need to recruit and train about 1.7 million craft workers in the next 10 years."

The salaries for these positions are respectable. In Virginia, carpenters and masons are making about $12 to $17 per hour. CAD operators earn over $22,000 annually, and estimators earn more than $50,000. "We have carpenters drawing salaries in the $40,000 range and steelworkers making $70,000 a year," says Ralph Lampert, the owner of Virginia Beach-based Lampert Construction Inc.

Nonetheless, Church says it's an uphill battle. The negative image is pervasive. High school counselors, many of them unfamiliar with the construction industry, steer students into vocational training only when all else fails. According to Church, 70 percent of future jobs require skills that have little to do with liberal arts education. Even so, school boards tend to emphasize college-bound classes over vocational training. "Those who make the curriculum decisions are not always aware of the job market," Church says. "By the year 2000, in carpentry alone, we will need 25 percent more workers than we have today. Our enrollments continue to drop, but the job market is really growing. There will be 1.5 million new jobs for CAD [computer assisted design] operators. ... But we are still not reaching those we need to reach because there is such a strong bias against vocational education. ... Vo-tech programs may be forced out."

Judy West, a counselor at Massanutten Technical Center in Harrisonburg agrees: "Because the dollars are so tight, we may have to cut programs if it continues," she says. "We are all very frustrated and no one knows why we don't get more funding. We have excellent programs, in carpentry, masonry, plumbing ... and we always hear from construction firms looking for workers because they have so much trouble finding help."

Many of the funding decisions are made by individual school boards. It seems that the push toward standards of learning and an emphasis on academic basics means a hot new reading program may win more funds than a vo-tech program that is losing enrollment.

But Church says construction industry leaders are getting more vocal at the local level. "We are trying to give schools as much information as we can," he says. SkillsUSA's Virginia chapters have successfully sponsored student contests and activities, Church says, and "we're finding that a strong vocational student can pull in other students."

At the forefront "is getting the actual employers involved. When they come and say: 'Look we're willing to offer $35,000 a year,' that helps."

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Ralph Lampert wanted to be a baseball player. But two things happened that would change the course of his life. The first revelation came when he realized he might not make it in the big leagues. The second occurred one summer while he was laboring on a concrete crew in Richmond.

This life-changing day was particularly hot. Lampert's crew was pouring the concrete for a branch bank driveway when the concrete started to set too quickly. His supervisor turned to Lampert and said: "Here are the tools, finish up the job." Reluctantly -- he had never done that part of the job before -- Lampert "went to work on it. ... I saved that driveway."

Every now and then, Lampert would drive by the site and admire his creation. "At the age of 17, I realized the permanence in construction work and that you can take a lot of pride in it," he says. "I speak to young people often and tell them that I never envisioned myself in the construction industry. Like every little boy, I figured I'd play ball."

However profound the driveway experience was, Lampert stayed in ball-playing mode while getting a degree in broadcast communication from Virginia Tech. But shortly before graduation, he received an offer from the concrete company to be a project manager. He jumped at the chance. "There's no leveler playing field than in construction; everything is driven by your ability to do the job," he says. "There is such opportunity for those who know the business."

In 1994, Lampert founded his own company, Lampert Construction Inc. to handle commercial work. "I take a lot of pride in our industry ... and the way I see it, if they (students) do it for a summer job, even at the lowest end, they can see the opportunities that exist for every person in the field."

Lampert wants to improve the image of his industry, so he goes to job fairs and talks to young people. "It's amazing, we went to a job fair sponsored by the cities of Virginia Beach and Norfolk for rising seniors," he says. "Kids were lined up at (other) booths, and we said: 'Come talk to us about construction,' and they said: ÔWe want computers.'"

Bob Lyons thinks kids get the wrong impression. "I see it all the time," says the executive director of Norfolk's Builders and Contractors Exchange Inc. "They want high-tech jobs, and working outdoors doesn't have the appeal it once had. We have to get them involved in hands-on work so they can see something positive."

That's why the National Associated General Contractors gives fifth-grade teachers "Build Up" kits designed to foster a greater appreciation for the construction industry. Each kit contains educational videos, materials for classroom projects and take-home activities. And beginning this spring, fourth and fifth graders will get some real-life construction experience at the Science Museum of Virginia. "If I Had A Hammer" is a program that was "developed by a carpenter who believed that some children learn through doing," says Ginger Bower, the museum's director of corporate development. The students will take House Building 101 lessons as they construct a prefabricated 8-foot by 11-foot wooden house with windows, a door and a front porch.

Home Depot funds the program nationally, and in Richmond the Associated General Contractors of Virginia provide additional support. The program is designed to show students the value of teamwork and how to apply math to real-world challenges. But industry leaders hope it will also give the kids a chance to experience the sense of accomplishment that comes from building something from the ground up.

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The construction industry used to be an employers' market -- not anymore. "We can't get people. It is very difficult to find skilled workers, carpenters and laborers," says Bob Walker, vice president of estimating for Tidewater Construction Corp. in Virginia Beach. "People don't want to work in construction anymore. As a result, with the pressure to get things done, we're running double shifts, six and seven days a week."

The worker shortage is a common theme. Lee Wilhelm, president of Roanoke-based J.M. Turner & Co., says he doesn't have a single job going that doesn't need more workers. "With 2.4 percent unemployment, I don't know what we're going to do. There's just no labor pool to draw from," he says. "The labor shortage is a severe problem. Everybody is going to have to pull together and realize the labor shortage is affecting the construction industry."

Lyons and Church say part of the problem is the big push to promote high-tech careers. That's why industry leaders are so eager to tell the story of Dao Huynh, the Vietnamese immigrant who turned his construction know-how into a high-tech business. "My first impression of the industry was, 'these people are technologically behind,'" Huynh recalls. He didn't understand why they did everything by hand. "But recently they are taking the charge and getting very advanced."

High-tech construction tools and projects are becoming more common in the commonwealth. There's Blacksburg's Smart Road, a $110 million, six-mile stretch of highway embedded with the latest research infrastructure. The two-mile section that's already under construction includes underground electrical conduits, a fiber-optic data network, pavement sensors, a weather-making capability, experimental lighting, and 13 different asphalt sections for testing.

Leveling concrete foundations also has gone high-tech. "Now we can pour 50,000 square feet of concrete at a shot," says Bill Tipton an estimator for AGM Development in Virginia Beach. His company uses a million-dollar machine called a laser skreed, although smaller jobs are still finished by hand.

Another major application of advanced technology is the employment of global positioning systems to survey construction sites. Using the same Department of Defense satellites that guide missiles toward Iraqi targets, surveyors and engineers are able to save days of work. "When I was first doing topographic surveying, we took a mylar sheet into the field, taped it to a piece of plywood and drew the building to scale before we gave it to the draftsmen," says Tom Reed, director of surveying for Glenn & Sadler, a Norfolk architectural and engineering firm. "Now we can go out into the field and get coordinates and data collection with a hand-held calculator."

According to Reed, global positioning can even be used as an excavation tool. A sensor is mounted to the blade of an earth mover. The sensor then receives a signal from a handful of satellites that tell the operator when the right amount of dirt has been moved. Global positioning also was used to help replace the Coleman Bridge, which spans the York River to connect Gloucester and York counties. Before builders floated sections of the bridge down the river to the site, global positioning sensors were placed on both shores to ensure the links were perfectly aligned.

"The key issue we face as technology advances is manpower," says George Sadler, president of Glenn and Sadler. "Finding the people who have the desire and then those who have the training. ... The future is not just tied to engineers and surveyors, but it is tied directly to the contractor. And while we're not there yet, the industry is heading toward a paperless system. We can look at all kinds of weather conditions that impact a building; we can look at structures in 3-D; we can actually walk ... or fly through these buildings, and we can even have the moon rising, the sun setting."

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This month marks Dao Huynh's fourth year in business, and he's still glad he changed career paths when he did.

At Virginia Tech, he received about $8,000 in scholarship support from the Associated General Contractors of Virginia, the Associated Builders and Contractors and the National Home Builders Association. Huynh graduated with a degree in building construction and civil engineering, a program that helps students learn to manage the risk associated with the industry. "We have produced many of Virginia's leaders in the construction industry," says Tom Mills, an associate professor in the construction program. "We create a lot of entrepreneurs. We build and develop leaders, teaching them how to be critical thinkers."

Today life is changing rapidly for the boy who hid in the Malaysian jungle. He's buying his own house; he's engaged to be married; he's on several community organization boards, and his career is going from strength to strength. "The business has steadily grown, about 35 percent each year," Huynh says, "but this year it's about 40 percent." And while computerized scheduling for the construction industry has been the company's bread and butter, Huynh says the company's web site division has really helped it grow.

"We went from a one-man operation to seven people, and it's our three-year plan to hit $1 million," says Huynh. "This is a very dynamic industry."