Lifelong Ohio Valley resident and Executive Director of Project BEST Nathan Butts said he is seeing a change happening in how the trades are perceived.

Butts has been in his position at Project BEST, a local construction labor management organization in Wheeling, for just under a year, but has a lot of insight into changing trends in construction and trades industries and their workers.

Butts graduated from West Liberty University with a degree in business. He worked for a few different companies in business development roles before being asked to take on the executive director role at Project BEST when it opened up last spring.

Project BEST started in 1984 as a “marketing and advocacy arm” in the construction and trades field in the upper Ohio Valley area, Butts said. It is a project shared between the Upper Ohio Valley Building and Construction Trades Council and the Ohio Valley Construction Employers Council.

Butts focuses on furthering two of Project BEST’s overarching goals. First, he works on educating young people and helping “open their eyes to the opportunities that the trades provide.”

Second, he pushes local project managers to utilize local union laborers on construction projects rather than outsourcing labor. This keeps money flowing back into the Upper Ohio Valley, he said.

One recent trend he has seen in the field has been a shift in how people think about higher education, particularly post-pandemic. People are realizing college isn’t for everyone, Butts said.

Butts said more and more young people are becoming privy to the fact that you don’t need to pay tens of thousands of dollars for college if it doesn’t interest you or you can’t afford tuition. In fact, most apprenticeship programs in the trades will pay workers while they train them.

“It seems like people are really opening their eyes to, ‘hey I can just go straight into the workforce and instead of having 40 or 50 thousand [dollars] in debt, I can have 40 or 50 thousand [dollars] that’s mine,'” he said.

Another trend in the field is the change in perceptions about trade and construction workers, he said. It’s not something for “kids who just wanna slack off;” it’s a viable career option that requires a lot of intelligence and skill.

“I think that narrative is shifting too where it’s not something that people who are uneducated are going through, there’s tons of educated people getting involved in the trades they’re just choosing not to waste their money on college,” Butts said.

Another big trend in the construction industry is a surge of more and more women entering the workforce, a field that has been historically dominated by men.

Something Project BEST is working with local schools on is increasing the availability of programs for project managers and estimators, which typically require at least a two-year degree that is not offered at many educational institutions. Because of this, there is a great need for individuals in the field who can do these jobs.

While general technological advances like artificial intelligence and automation are present across all industries at this point, Butts said he believes the trades will remain largely hands-on and not be largely impacted.

“These jobs have been around forever and they’re going to continue to be around. This is a very important part of society, especially here in the upper Ohio Valley — this is a very strong union area,” he said.