Alaska Works Partnership Expands Training with Lowe’s Foundation Grant

According to Associated General Contractors of America, construction employment in Alaska grew by 18 percent from 2023 to 2024.

Associated General Contractors of America’s analysis also shows that most Alaska construction jobs pay better than the median annual salary, but demand far exceeds the supply of skilled workers. According to the US Chamber of Commerce, Alaska lacks available workers for more than one-third of job openings.

AWP helps train workers across four major programs, offering both hands-on skills training and workshops on health and safety topics. This fiscal year, AWP has fifty skills trainings scheduled and sixty on health and safety.

The biggest AWP program, its construction academy, offers training open to anyone. Three other programs offer more focused support. Helmets to Hardhats helps military veterans and people leaving the military transition to construction jobs. Women in the Trades provides free training from women already employed in various trades. A fourth program helps provide training in rural Alaska.

“Alaska Works really embodies the objectives and the mission of what we’re trying to do,” Conway says. With the Gable grant, Cowell says AWP can fund eighteen of the skills trainings scheduled through July.

Funding to Meet Demand

At a March 4 Women in the Trades event, the Anchorage AWP shop bustled with attendees making small wood workboxes and sawhorses. Cowell says AWP gets more than 3,000 applications a year—more than 100 for each training—but class sizes are limited by available funding.

For fifteen years, the funding for their biggest program, the Alaska Construction Academy, has remained the same. Rising costs mean that the budget covers less and less each year.

In addition to covering the cost of materials for additional trainees, Cowell says the Lowe’s Foundation grant will also help expand space for building maintenance training. The long-term investment will pay for simulators and tools to provide realistic training “for years to come,” she says. “It’s definitely a significant investment in Alaska’s future for the trades.”

Beefed Up Résumé

Jana Mabie, an apprentice with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), says AWP training has helped her professional journey in multiple ways. In the two years between high school and becoming indentured with IBEW, Mabie took AWP classes “to kind of beef up my résumé.”

Since her apprenticeship started, she’s become very involved with AWP’s Women in the Trades program. Mabie says the classes have helped her navigate a profession in which men significantly outnumber women. According to a Construction Coverage analysis of US Census Bureau data, the gender gap is smallest in Alaska, with women accounting for nearly 14 percent of construction employees.

“Alaska Works has really helped me,” Mabie says, citing frequent gatherings where she’s connected with women in other industries. Down the road, Mabie hopes to open her own shop.

Ultimately, Mabie, who is Koyukon Athabascan, hopes her professional success will help her people more broadly. She should become a journeyman telecommunications technician by this summer, helping extend broadband internet access to more of Alaska—and, through it, access to resources like telehealth and online therapists. Mabie believes that could make a difference.

“I know what my people face,” Mabie says. “Alaska has one of the highest rates of suicide and drug/alcohol abuse, domestic violence.” With internet access, remote communities could access professionals who could “help out in a lot of those situations, so I think that’s really important.”