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Education/Training
 July 31: Lean EP Unit 4: The Last Planner System August 7: Lean EP Unit 5: Supply Chain & Assembly August 7-8: PMDP Module 1: Estimating and Job Costing August 15: First Aid / CPR / AED Training Safety
NOTE: The AGC Houston Safety Committee Meeting Scheduled on July 27 has been rescheduled for August 24. AGC Members receive a 10% discount on all UTA OSHA-taught classes. Please call (866) 906-9190 and provide the member code (AGCHOU). July 30-August 2: OSHA 500: Trainer Course in OSHA Standards for Construction
August 6-9: OSHA 510: Occupational Safety and Health Standards for Construction
August 7-9: OSHA 3115: Fall Protection Standards For Construction & General Industry
August 13-16: OSHA 511: Occupational Safety/Health, General Industry
AGC News
Each year the AGC Education and Research Foundation offers undergraduate and graduate level scholarships to students enrolled in ABET or ACCE accredited construction management or construction related engineering programs. The application opened July 1, 2018 and closes November 1, 2018.
Through endowments made by AGC members and supporters, as well as AGC Chapters, the Education and Research Foundation awards over 150 scholarships each year to students dedicated to pursuing a career in the construction industry.
The chief executive officer of the Associated General Contractors of America, Stephen E. Sandherr, released the following statement in reaction to the passage of the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act:
"It is encouraging to see Congress acting in a bipartisan way to pass a measure that will provide a long-overdue boost to career and technical education in this country. For too long we have chosen to push every student to college instead of providing them with essential and valuable skills. Today’s vote marks a key milestone in rebalancing the nation’s educational approach by offering students multiple paths to success.
AGC needs your help to measure the scope of construction labor shortages by taking a quick survey. AGC of America and Autodesk are working to better quantify where these shortages are taking place, how severe they are, and what steps firms are taking to both cope with tight labor markets and improve the supply of new, qualified workers. That is why we are asking members to take a few minutes to complete the workforce survey that we have prepared.
AGC's 2018 Construction Environmental Conference (CEC) homes in on the most critical environmental compliance and risk issues impacting the business of construction. Whether your goal is to maintain an excellent compliance record, keep abreast of key developments, or increase your understanding of how environmental risks affect your projects ? AGC's CEC is the conference for you. Construction employment increased by 13,000 jobs in June and by 282,000 jobs over the past year, reaching a 10-year high, according to an analysis of new government data by the Associated General Contractors of America. Association officials said many construction firms appear to be more willing to hire amid lower tax rates and a more favorable business environment, but caution that trade fights and labor shortages pose risks to future growth. 
Events
Join us Tuesday, July 31, 2018 to discuss our upcoming veteran’s event and to connect you with industry partners from NextOp and the Texas Veterans Commission who will discuss all opportunities and benefits available to vets.
To attend, please RSVP to Kim Mason at kim.m@agchouston.org or 713-843-3720.
 Come Mix And Mingle August 2 at Cafe Adobe for our summer Membership Mixer!
We're moving the party downstairs, in the main dining area!
 Teams forming NOW!
Friday, August 10, 2018
Hermann Park Golf Course
7:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
CHECK OUT A SPECIAL VIDEO ANNOUNCEMENT! We are Celebrating Houston's Finest Construction Projects September 22 at The Houstonian!
There's no better way to show your support for the building industry than to be an APEX Awards gala sponsor!
Member News
Peckar & Abramson, PC is pleased to announce that Courtney Bryan Sheaffer has joined the firm's Houston office as an Associate.
Sheaffer focuses her practice on Labor & Employment disputes as well as commercial litigation. Her experience includes representation of clients across various industries including commercial real estate developers, construction companies, oil & gas service providers and equipment manufacturers. Sheaffer’s labor and employment experience includes representation of employers in cases involving sexual harassment, race, religion, gender, age and disability discrimination, wage and hour class actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act, breaches of non-solicitation and non-compete agreements, misappropriation of confidential information and trade secrets. Active in the community, sh is the current president of The Woodlands Bar Association
Peckar & Abramson, PC is pleased to announce that Construction lawyer Matt Moore, Co-Managing Partner of the Houston office, has been elected to a three-year term as a Council Member of the Construction Law Section of the State Bar of Texas, with over 2,500 members consisting of legal professionals from public and private sectors involved in the practice of construction law.
Board Certified in Construction Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, Moore is a member of the firm's Construction and Surety practice groups, where he focuses primarily on the transactional, litigation and dispute resolution aspects of Construction Law. He represents general contractors, sureties, owners, developers, subcontractors and suppliers in all phases of construction and on a wide variety of construction-related issuess.
News you can Use
By Tony Stergio, Chris Scheurich and Andy Clark, Andrews Myers, PC
Commercial drones are becoming more common on construction sites, as employers monitor and inspect their own sites for safety and related issues. These drones allow employers to capture images of particularly difficult or dangerous places on the jobsite, such as towers, bridges, and scaffolding. They can also assist employers in broadly surveying and mapping large jobsites.
Employers aren’t the only ones taking advantage of the new technology. Recently, at the AGC Mid-year Safety Meeting, OSHA Assistant Regional Director Josh Flesher stated that OSHA is planning to deploy drones for the same reasons employers are?to assist in safely inspecting jobsites, especially hard-to-reach areas of the sites. What do employers need to consider regarding OSHA's use of drones?
  
Learn how to move away from manual, paper-intensive EHS workflows to achieve OSHA compliance.
This summer heralds in a new and challenging phase of environmental health and safety regulation reporting. Starting in July 2018, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration will require businesses across the U.S. to submit workplace illness and injury reports digitally. Unfortunately, many businesses have yet to make the shift to managing their EHS data digitally, putting them at risk of significant fines. For these companies, workflows such as safety meetings, safety inspections and accident reports documented on paper forms or spreadsheets and mailed to OSHA are still the norm. It’s a time-consuming and error-prone process that also delays accident and incident reporting to both business managers and OSHA. Texas-based cabinet manufacturer Kent Moore Cabinets LLC will pay $175,458 in back wages to 59 employees to resolve overtime, minimum wage, and recordkeeping violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) found in an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD).
WHD investigators found that the employer failed to pay overtime to service technicians. Kent Moore Cabinets LLC incorrectly classified these employees as exempt from overtime, and paid them a guaranteed wage plus commissions for their primarily manual labor. The service technicians received no additional compensation when they worked more than 40 hours in a workweek, in violation of the FLSA’s overtime requirements. The company also failed to maintain accurate pay and time records for these employees, violating the FLSA’s recordkeeping provisions.
What hiring challenges are you facing? Have you had to change salaries to attract quality talent? Hays construction is asking for your insights to map out what the hiring trends look like for the US construction industry. Average survey time is 15 minutes. Have your say.
Lee College is looking to hire part-time craft instructors to support a curriculum developed for fast track industrial training. Thanks to a grant from the TWC National Dislocated Worker Disaster Grant (Harvey Grant), the college is able to offer classes to help train and grow a skilled workforce. Interested individuals can contact Lupe Martinez directly at gmartinez@lee.edu or by phone at 281-425-6214. You may also contact Marsha Tuha, Director, Workforce Development at mtuha@lee.edu. Membership Benefits
The program is free to join and no minimum shipping, copy or print requirements to take advantage of this great member benefit. What’s more, you may be eligible for other special offers and promotions. Sign up now or call 1.888.708.4100.
NPP offers AGC members exclusive savings on a variety of Verizon Wireless services for business. Plus, you can also share Verizon discounts with your employees. Sign up today so your business can start saving with the nation’s largest and most reliable 4G LTE network. NPP members receive:
Contact NPP Customer Service at customerservice@mynpp.com or call 800.810.3909
Data DIGest is your source for the latest economic news relevant to the construction industry with commentary and analysis from AGC's Chief Economist, Ken Simonson. It brings you actionable information to stay ahead of the curve on issues such as materials, prices, construction employment, and state-by-state construction trends
An annual subscription gets you 50 weeks of insight and actionable information to help companies in the construction industry stay ahead of the curve.
Data DIGest is free to AGC Members Here's Looking at You
 AGC Houston send a big THANK YOU to DeWalt Power Tools for donating their OSHA Drilling Solutions tools to AGC Houston. Juan De La Vega came by the AGC Houston office and set up two display stands that feature the OSHA dust compliant line of grinding and cutting tools that can be used for demonstration in OSHA safety classes. The displays include tools that manage dust extraction systems to cut down on silica dust created on the jobsite and to become compliant with the OSHA Silica Dust Ruling (1926.1153).
Kim Mason, AGC Houston Director of Safety Services, asked De La Vega for old tools that could be donated and used for demonstration during the OSHA 10- and 30-hour classes. "I am blown away by the generosity of DeWalt - Juan brought and donated over $4,000 of power tools that will be used to train the proper way to handle them and to showcase the top of the line dust mitigation systems," stated Mason.
New Members
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