Associated General Contractors of America

But I wouldn't hesitate to look locally for small groups that are doing this because there are some really impressive groups out there.

But nationally, you've got some member organizations like ABC and AGC and ACE Mentor Program.

And they kind of vary.

ABC and AGC, that's a membership for contractors like me.

But oftentimes they do a lot of workforce development.

A lot of times they have apprenticeship pathways and things like that.

They've got some really fantastic stuff, really for all levels.

I was exploring it earlier, just looking at their elementary stuff.

Uh, also on the 16th, we have Brandon Anderson.

He's the Vice President of Safety from AGC out of Missouri, and he's gonna come in and talk about mental health in construction.

Uh, on the 17th, we have Brian Rizzo, the Acting Director of Federal OSHA from Construction.

He's gonna come in and give us an update on OSHA and, and kind of stick around a little bit for a little Q&A.

What educational seminars are on tap?

I think right now in this day and age and, and what we're all focusing on is mental health.

Brandon Anderson, Vice President of Safety for AGC Missouri, is gonna do an unbelievable, uh, session on mental health.

We have Erica Lee, who's gonna talk about damage prevention.

We have Cal Beyer, who's a fellow member of the NAC, and Cal will give you a brief self-introduction when we get to that stage.

We have Angela Crawford, and she comes to us from Kansas City, where she's VP of Membership and Marketing for Builders, which is a division of the Associated General Contractors, and she'll tell you more about other things she's involved with.

Our third guest is Kara McCaffrey, who comes to us from Wisconsin.

And Kara got an amazing job.

With that said, let's go ahead and move on to our final article here.

Well, we have a couple of different articles here, but this one comes to us from an article from Connor Boyack and then also AGC of America.

Tariffs are now both a cost line and a political problem.

From the first article here, construction input costs are up 7.1% from July 2025 to July 2026.

Yeah.

One of the things I was looking at is Associated General Contractors of America, AGC, their 2026 construction hiring and business outlook said that this year, 61% of the respondents say their firms are using AI or plan to increase investments in it, up from 44% in last year's survey.

And

that of that work, 45% of them are using it for office and administrative functions, 23% for estimating and 20% to design and pre-construction.

I was everywhere.

I was with the city, with the county, doing trainings from Turner Construction, Carolinas AGC, the Women Business Center, Prospera, the Hispanic Contractors Association of the Carolinas, and many others.

So I was focused and safety, so OSHA.

So I

2024, I took over... 80 hours of safety.

That was just with the North Carolina Department of Labor.

Now you're talking about the Turner training and Carolina's AGC and the city, and they all incorporate three, four hours of safety training.

So I have safety at the forefront of what we are trying to do.

a distinction becoming more important for data centers, grid infrastructure, and other equipment-intensive projects because construction inputs are no longer moving together.

The producer price index for inputs to new non-residential construction increased 7.1 percent from June 2025 to June 2026, according to an Associated General Contractors of America analysis of federal data.

Contractors' bid prices for new non-residential buildings increased only 3.5% during the same period, a gap suggesting contractors have been absorbing a meaningful portion of higher costs rather than passing everything immediately to project owners.

But even those averages conceal the bigger contract problem.