At the SkillsUSA Championships held in Kansas City last month, the states of Indiana and Florida provided the champions for this year’s Carpentry and TeamWorks competitions respectively.

SkillsUSA is the national organization for students in trade, industrial, technical and health occupations education. It sponsors the SkillsUSA Championships annually to recognize the achievements of career and technical education students and to encourage them to strive for excellence and pride in their chosen occupations.  For over 11 years, the Steel Framing Alliance has been a partner of this very important program and has offered training sessions for vocational/technical instructors on how to add cold-formed steel to a school’s building trades curriculum.

Under the leadership of Boyd Worsham of the Haskell Company, the Carpentry technical team put together a challenging carpentry project for 75 competitors.  With steel framing supplied by Dietrich Industries, fasteners by Grabber Construction products, “scruguns” by DeWalt Tools and hand tools by IRWIN the plan called for the construction of a loadbearing steel framed wall atop a steel floor platform, as a portion of the project.  The majority of competitors completed the steel portion of the competition with success - a testament to SFA’s years of representation on the technical team.  Building trades’ instructors have gotten the message that steel framing is not going away – and have included steel framing training in their respective programs.  This year the fruits of their efforts were at display at SkillsUSA.

At the same event, 50 teams competed to complete a structure that included carpentry, masonry, electrical, and plumbing aspects.  Steel framing consisted of a load-bearing and non-loadbearing wall.  Once again Dietrich Industries and Grabber Construction Products provided the material and fasteners. 

Congratulations to all of the medalists and competitors for their efforts.

Editor, Framework Online