(Radio Iowa) – A new hands-on learning facility in northwest Iowa is designed to help fill high-demand jobs. The Sioux City Community School District’s Career Academy has opened a construction trades building for students, including 17-year-old Nathaniel Hamann who attends East High School. “I’m hoping to learn electrical and plumbing and how to do all the foundation work and just a little bit of everything that goes into building a house,” Hamann says, “and I can just apply that to everything else in my life, and that would be good information to know.” Students at the facility study skills that are valued by potential employers, like Skip Perley, the C-E-O of Thomson Solutions Group, an electrical contractor and technology integrator. He’s also board president of the Sioux City Public Schools Foundation.

“There’s no lack of opportunity,” Perley says. “We need workers, and we need them at a faster pace than we’ve ever had before.” Perley says he started his career as an electrician right out of high school. He says his company is struggling to find trained, qualified workers. “These kids will come out of this program and either go directly into the workforce or maybe into an apprenticeship of some kind,” Perley says, “and they’ll help us build America, and we have a lot to build.”

The program now has 44 students learning about plumbing, H-VAC, electrical, and even building new houses, including Habitat for Humanity homes.