Keith Gore has been working as a construction laborer for about two years, but after a Cape Fear Community College program, he has his eye on something more specific.

Gore just completed one of the tracks in CFCC's Construction Institutes, a two-week intensive program designed to help address labor shortages in the local construction industry.

The institutes offered four tracks: plumbing, carpentry, HVAC and masonry, and Gore chose plumbing. He and other students spent 80 hours learning about their chosen track with the aim of getting a foot in the door in the industry.

"That's the line of business that I saw most fitting, and it offered the most amount of money. It's a year-round thing; it's something that's always going to be needed," Gore said of plumbing. "I didn't have much knowledge about it, but over the two-week period, it kind of opened the doors and kind of taught me some important things as far as the tools and the material."

At CFCC's downtown campus on Friday, local business owners met with students who completed the institutes with the aim of determining whether some of them could become employees, as soon as Monday in some cases.

CFCC partnered with the Wilmington-Cape Fear Home Builders Association (WCFHBA) to offer the program. 

The Paul Gregory Foundation, the philanthropic arm of WCFHBA, awarded $5,000 through the Ted Hardeen Memorial Scholarship Fund, which is funded locally by Coldwell Banker Sea Coast Advantage, to provide 26 scholarships for Construction Institutes students. More than 50 students signed up for the program.   

"We're hoping to see this not only become an annual thing but maybe even more than once a year," said David Spetrino, president of WCFHBA and founder of PBC Design + Build.

The construction industry nationwide is anticipating that current labor shortages will continue, for a number of reasons. 

"During the recession, nobody was training to go into the construction industry because there were no jobs for the construction industry, coupled with limitations on visas and green cards. We're not seeing the traditionally immigrant labor force who usually filled that gap -- it's not so readily available," explained Spetrino, who added that a perceived stigma of working with one's hands as a career has also served as "a detraction."

Construction Institutes students seemed hopeful Friday about their chances for future employment.

"I always liked working in wood. As a teenager, I got started replacing wood, replacing front porch stairs, and learning how to do that and learning how to do it correctly are two different things," said Rosa "Penny" Jackson, who completed the carpentry track. "I think I'll really like working with wood and doing something more custom-made."

Another carpentry track student, Brian Brandenburg, decided it was time to change his direction in life after working at New Hanover High School first as an English teacher and then as an IT employee. 

"I had a tough time deciding which one [of the Construction Institutes tracks] to take because I've done a little bit of everything. I like fixing things," Brandenburg said. "I've built a few things here and there along the way, but definitely learned a lot about framing, roof work, cutting the angles that we'd need to cut."