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Transcript of Webinar

Best Practices for Effective Work Site Management

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Transcript byNoble Transcription Services

Murrieta, CA

LAURA CASERTANO: Again, I want to welcome everyone to today's best practices for effective work site management webinar, and again, if you haven't done so already or if you joined late, just go ahead and introduce yourself in that chat window.

And now, I'm going to turn things right over to today's moderator, Michelle Lee-Jones. She's the national YouthBuild liaison for the U.S. Department of Labor. Michelle? Michelle, are you on the line?

GARY GONZALEZ: Michelle, you may still be on mute.

MICHELLE LEE-JONES: All right. Thank you, Laura. Good afternoon, and welcome to today's webinar. Today we have a wealth of information that our presenters will be sharing with you. Today's agenda will consist of qualifying construction work sites at 2:05, additional work site factors at 2:25, construction and other credentials at 2:35, best practices and peer sharing at 2:45, and Q&A and wrap-up at 3:20.

Today you will receive an overview of four objectives, understanding requirements for work site form review and approval, awareness of allowable construction credentials and construction plus options, planning for work site contingencies, and considering best practices in construction from YouthBuild grantees.

Today we have three awesome presenters, Jenn Smith, national YouthBuild director at U.S. Department of Labor, Ted Road, director of Green Construction, YouthBuild USA, and Eva Blake, senior director, Green Initiative. Now, I would like to turn this over to Jenn.

JENN SMITH: Thank you so much, Michelle, and thank you to everyone who's joining us today. I'm really thrilled to see in the welcome chat that there's a great mix of some of our existing programs as well as some of our brand-new programs.

I think that's wonderful because I think the thing that we definitely want to emphasize with you guys today is how important having qualifying work sites is and what you need to know to have qualifying work sites and how we can help support you in that effort. And that's an issue that can happen to brand-new grantees as much as it can happen to existing grantees. So we think that you can never hear this information too much. So thank you very much for joining us.

So the first thing that we're going to cover is just some very basic information about – that's relevant to work sites that happened under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which at this point hopefully you're all familiar is our relatively new legislation that the YouthBuild program is under.

So under that legislation one important thing to note is that no more than 15 percent of grant funds can be used for training and supervision on community or other public facilities. Generally, the focus in the YouthBuild program is of course on low-income housing for homeless or low-income families, but there is a small percentage, up to 15 percent, that can be used for community or other public facilities. This community or other public facilities is

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defined in our regulations, but generally this would be things like a library or a park or a community rec center.

Additionally, one thing to note is that at least 40 percent of the time that you offer in your program model must be for occupational skills training. Now, that isn't necessarily just construction. That also covers the construction plus components of your program, if you're going that route, and we'll discuss that in a little more detail later.

But ultimately, almost half of your program model should include that occupational skills training, which is both in the classroom and that hands-on construction training, which is really going to be a big focus of what we talk about today.

So to that point, every YouthBuild program is required to provide construction training and hands-on work experience, but while many programs choose to focus solely on construction and will clearly be probably doing multiple units of construction training, some programs who are doing construction plus may not have all of their youth working on construction.

And therefore, we set a baseline for the expectations of how many low-income housing units are built or renovated in the YouthBuild program, if you are going that route where you're doing construction plus as well as construction.

And that means that that baseline is that you have to provide sufficient construction training and hands-on work experience to produce one unit at least of built or renovated housing during your three-year period of performance, which we certainly think is not a hard target.

OK. So the importance of the work site description. All of you should be aware of this form since it was required as part of the attachments for your Funding Opportunity Announcement to which you responded in order to get this award.

This is a very, very important form. You should keep it very near and dear and close to your heart because you will certainly be using it throughout the life cycle of your grant. This form is otherwise known as ETA form 9143, and we're going to walk through in the next couple of slides exactly what we're looking for with this form.

A couple things to keep in mind. As I mentioned, this was submitted with your grant application. You will also use this any time you are submitting to get additional work sites approved. No work site is approved for youth for training, though, until it is reviewed by your federal project officer and concurred on by the national office as included as part of your statement of work.

Now, certainly be aware that using work sites that have not been approved can result in unallowed cost findings for grantees. The Department of Labor's been running the YouthBuild program now for almost 10 years, and I can certainly tell you that the things you're going to hear during the rest of this presentation come from a wealth of experience that has happened to grantees, both good and bad.


And so we certainly hope that you will take this to heart and understand that some of these issues that we're going to highlight for you are things that grantees have run into trouble with and that certainly includes having grantees go ahead and start working on a work site before it's been approved and then running into trouble when it turns out that that work site did not qualify. You do not want to do that and then have spent money, grant funds on that work site that you may then have to pay back at the end of your grant. Always better to get approval up front.

So this is a little hard to see, I realize. Hopefully for those of you, if this wasn't mentioned up front, those of you viewing at home, if you see there's this little box toward the top of your presentation screen that has arrows pointing in all four directions where you can go to full screen, it might be better to view these next couple of slides in full screen most so you can really see this work site description form.

But we just want to walk through a couple of key pieces with this work site form because, for any of you who were on the grants management webinar that we held last week, you heard from the FPOs that we have special conditions that are unique to the YouthBuild grants that you will be seeing when you get your grant packages, which I can update and say that many of the grant packages have started going out this week. I heard that from the grant office this morning.

So that's great news. For those of you who haven't gotten them yet, though, when you do get them, please make sure that you look at those special conditions because I will tell you that almost every single grantee had a special condition of award that they must address within the next 30 days that had to do with their work sites.

We know that the work site form is not the easiest form to understand, and that's also part of the reason why we do these presentations, because generally we had a lot of issues with grantees including incorrect information in various parts of the form.

So we just think it's beneficial to walk you through some basics of the form so that you understand what some of those issues are so that you can resolve them when that special condition is in your grant award so you can get the work site approved because, basically, at this point anybody who has a special condition, that means that work site is not approved until you resolve the special condition and give us the accurate information we need in those forms. So just keep that in mind.

So zooming in a little bit on this form, here are some important things to understand. When we ask for the applicant name, that is your grantee organization. That is the name of the organization that got the YouthBuild grant award. Common mistake here was that people would put the name of the property owner, the Habitat for Humanity that they're partnering with, the name of the individual whose house they're renovating, etc.

The applicant name here is your YouthBuild program name. That may also be the property owner, but if it's not, it should always be the name of your YouthBuild program so that we understand and have that name on the form. That's one of the key things that we found that people did not do accurately.


Another thing to note is that every one of these fields requires some sort of response, whether it's a check box, a yes, no, selecting the type of housing, and we definitely had some places where people were in just too much of a hurry and they missed one of these boxes. So if you have that issue with your awards or in your special conditions, please make sure that you are reviewing this form thoroughly and making sure that every single question on this front page is responded to. It will be sent back to you if not.

One important thing to note here is that question number four asks about the individual housing project site estimate and documentation of resources. In order to fill this out, we're asking you to include attachment 1A, which is tab two of the Excel spreadsheet which is the work site form. The work site form is downloadable as an attachment to this webinar. When you entered the room, you'll see that there's an attachment.

So hopefully none of you have any problem finding that work site. Another thing to note is that some of you were using outdated expired versions of the form. So to be clear, the version that we have you can download on this webinar, and the version that is on the YouthBuild webpage is the updated version.

And you'll know that it's the right version because it has a May 2018 expiration date, and I know that this form here expires in 2015 because we have these lovely screenshots from a previous presentation and I did not actually update it with the correct expiration date. It's easier to just tell you guys. So please note you should be using the form that has an expiration date of 2018. That is the accurate form to be using.

And I'm just going to quickly answer one question just because I saw this pop up and because it's relevant to something I just said. Somebody asked, "Programs must produce one unit of housing during the three years of performance, not a unit per cycle?"

That is correct. That is the minimum, but please note that if you have youth in construction, any youth that you have in construction training, those youth should be working on a work site. All youth are required to get hands-on experience in whatever vocational training they're receiving.

So if all of your youth are doing construction training, I would believe that you should be doing more than one unit of housing unless – it depends on how extensive that unit of housing is.

That baseline is really for people who are doing the construction plus component and aren't putting all of their youth through the construction training, but every youth has to have hands-on construction training experience on a work site. Please don't misconstrue what I said about that baseline to mean that not every youth needs to have hands-on work experience. Hopefully, that answers your question.

OK. So going forward with this form, additional issues that people run into, there are a series of attachments that are really required with this form, and we definitely found a lot of people filled out the work site form and did not include some or even all of these attachments. And these attachments are really the things that give us the background information that allow us to determine that your work site is qualifying.


Without the correct attachments we cannot determine that your work site is qualifying, and so that is something that has to be resolved. So please note the second reference to an attachment is with question number six around whether any of the units are currently occupied. This attachment often you will not have to include. This attachment is only required if you answered yes to this question.

If you are doing rehabilitation work on units that are currently occupied, then you have to provide to us an explanation of whether any of the people in those units are being displaced, and if so, where they're being displaced to.

I generally believe that the only couple of cases we had where any of the units were occupied, people were either able to provide an attachment that said that people were not being displaced because of the work that was being done or that they provided information on where they were being displaced to, another apartment building usually. This one was not generally a problem in our compliance review, but please do be aware that you do need to have that attachment, if you answer yes.

Our third attachment is attachment 1C. This attachment and attachment 1D, everybody must include. These are required always, and attachment 1C is the documentation of access. If you owned a property, if the grant organization actually owns this property, then what we'd be looking for is the deed that demonstrates ownership.

If you don't own the property and you are partnering with an organization that does, we're looking for, at a minimum, a letter from them that says they are giving you access to do the construction work and they understand what that entails. If you also have the deed, that's great as well, but we at least need something that says whomever owns this property is giving access.

And then finally, attachment D. This is the attachment – this is the one that I think people get wrong the most, and I completely understand. I think that we need to make this form clearer, and it is our intent to revise this form once it expires. But in the meantime, we're trying to address this through guidance and training such as this.

What we are really looking for with attachment 1D is for you to provide to us the information on exactly what construction work will be done on that work site because that is one of the most important pieces that I'll describe in a brief moment that helps us to understand whether the work site is qualifying. There is a minimum threshold of the level of construction work that you'll be doing on these projects in order for them to qualify, and attachment 1D is where you explain to us exactly what that construction work is.

We expect it to say things like these youth will participate in framing, drywall, blueprint review, pouring concrete for the foundation. These are just examples, but what we're looking for is that level of description. And understandably, because I don't think that we labeled this document very well, people think that it means sort of the roles and responsibilities that the partner and the grantee organization are sharing around managing the YouthBuild participants and their safety.


That is helpful information to have as well, but one of the key things attachment 1D must tell us and that many of you will have to revise through the special conditions is explaining to us exactly the level of construction work that will be undertaken that the youth will participate on so that we understand whether this qualifies as a sufficient hands-on experience for them. So please keep that in mind.

OK. This is attachment 1A, just to give you a little more information. We also find that people often end up giving us incorrect or incomplete information on this attachment. So just to walk through this quickly, what you're looking at on this slide is the top view of – there's two charts included on attachment 1A. The top chart is where we're asking you to tell us what resources are being used for the work site activities.

Now, what I want to be clear about is we don't mean with this things such as the stipends or wages that you pay to the participants or the construction staff to do the work, but we mean directly within these categories. The actual housing construction, that would be things like materials used in the training and building, architecture and engineering, acquisition. I think those are pretty clear-cut, but usually what we're looking for in housing construction is things related to materials and equipment that are needed to build the house and used in the housing construction.

So what we're looking for here is for you in each of these columns to list what those resources are, how much money, and in particular, if you're saying that you're using YouthBuild grant funds, we require you to then list for us exactly what those funds are being used for simply because there are limitations on what construction costs are allowable with YouthBuild grant funds. That's not true for these other categories.

So the rest of it is just providing information about what resources are going into this housing construction so that we have that documentation. And what we're looking for in each of these categories is the actual funding amount.

Some people have done things like an X instead, but what we're saying is, if you're using YouthBuild funds and you're using $15,000 in YouthBuild funds for allowable material costs, you would put $15,000 on the housing construction line under YouthBuild. If you're using completely private sources for the whole of this, you would break out those costs along these different categories, and it would be the actual costs you'd include. That's what's on the top chart.

If we go to the bottom part of this page – this is still page 1A – this bottom chart is where you then document whether those funding sources – you explain to us what those funding sources are. Is it CDBG money? Is it Habitat for Humanity dollars? Whether that money is cash or in kind, and then on the next column what funding amount was provided?

And we expect that the total of the dollar value provided on this chart matches the total dollar amount on the chart at the top. That's what we're really looking for is consistency here, and then also you'll see there's a page letter of – page number of letter. That's where we're asking for the


letters of commitment that support this construction work so that we have the full picture of who's included in this partnership to do the work site development.

OK. Hopefully that makes sense. Obviously, if you have any questions about any parts of this form, you can reach out to your federal project officer who they are very well-versed in reviewing these work site forms and can help you with any specific questions you may have.

So just some additional work site issues to consider here. As I said, utilizing actual work sites for that hands-on experience is a vital and necessary component of a YouthBuild program. Just doing classroom construction work is not going to be sufficient.

Again, as I mentioned, not every work site will qualify as a YouthBuild work site. It depends on that level of work in order for it to be comprehensive, and again, we'll talk about that very shortly. A couple of criteria that are very important for whether a work site qualifies is whether the work site meets that threshold for low income.

Another special condition that some work sites – or some grants – might have to resolve for us is that they weren't very specific about whether this work site was for low income, as defined by United States Housing Act, which I believe is 80 percent of the median income for the area is how that's defined, and all housing units have to be solely for low-income families, individuals, or a homeless shelter. So some people talked about low to medium income, and we want to be clear that it's really only low-income properties that qualify, and that's per our legislation.

Secondly, it's whether they have that substantial hands-on work experience. And so what we're looking for here is either, if it's from the ground up building experience such as building a new home from the ground up, including foundation, framing, roofing, obviously that's providing a depth and breadth of construction knowledge that would qualify.

But if you're doing rehabilitation, we really talk about it needing to be a somewhat substantial level. We provide an example here of a gut job. It doesn't necessarily have to be a gut job, but we'll go into in the next couple of slides what we really mean by what it would take in terms of the type of construction training to qualify.

But first, just some things to – oh, yeah. Sorry. So this is where we kind of describe to you what we're looking for in terms of what will qualify. So it has to provide an opportunity for hands-on training and experience in more than one of the modules or skill areas that are being studied and tested on within the construction certification that you guys are using. For instance, this can include, as I've mentioned, foundation, framing, brick masonry, carpentry, painting, plumbing, weatherization, as long as it includes at least two of the core modules.

And so, for instance, we often get suggestions about things like deconstruction, landscaping, and then people describing doing very minor home repairs when they talk about rehabilitation, things like screen repair or fence building. None of those activities would qualify on their own because they aren't within sort of those key modules that we've described – foundation, carpentry, plumbing, framing.


And so it's OK if you're doing some of these additional things, but they do not in and of their selves qualify. They would have to be additional things that you're doing on top of some of those core construction components.

So again, no work site that doesn't also include exposure to multiple modules or skill areas will be considered a qualifying work site. Painting alone or painting in addition to landscaping would not qualify because neither of those is one of those key modules. So just keep those in mind. It doesn't mean you can't do painting. It doesn't mean you can't do landscaping, but you have to also be doing some of that more significant construction training.

All right. So we're going to talk briefly about some of the work site pitfalls that we have seen from years of experience with grantees where things have kind of gotten grantees in trouble. So these are things that we want to make sure you're aware of. The first is making sure that all your work sites are approved.

So again, if you have a special condition on your work sites when you get this grant award in the next week or two, you definitely want to get them resolved because until you do that work site does not qualify. And for many of you, for the majority of you I will say it's very likely that your work sites will qualify once we get all of the necessary information on that work site form that we're looking for.

Some of this is just needing to have clear documentation as part of your grant file and information that just wasn't correct or was missing. And again, we'd like to get you all off on the right foot filling out the work site form correctly so that we don't have to keep sending them back to you because that only delays the ability to get the work sites approved.

And we know that often if, say, a work site has fallen through and you're trying to quickly get another work site in place, it can take a while to get that approved all the way through the grant officer so that it's added to your grant award. So the sooner we can get that and have it be an accurate work site form so that we can start processing it is certainly the better for you.

Another work site pitfall is, again, not ensuring that you have those sufficient training opportunities, that you don't have that breadth and depth that we'll talk about when I describe the Training and Employment Guidance Letter on work sites very shortly. Another pitfall, not ensuring restrictive covenants are in place. Again, this is one that we realize a lot of grantees are not necessarily aware of, but again, this is in our legislation and it's in our regulations.

Every YouthBuild property that you work on, either new construction or rehabilitation, must have a restrictive covenant in place, which Ted will describe restrictive covenants a little later on in this presentation, but that restrictive covenant has to be in place that says that this work site property or that – excuse me – that this property, when it's sold or rented, will only be done to low-income people who qualify.

And so we also – I believe one of the attachments that we have for you as part of this is an example of what a restrictive covenant looks like, but Ted will go into more detail on that later. But that is another one that has definitely – we've had some grantees end up with work sites that


don't qualify because they didn't have the restrictive covenant and they ended up having to pay back some of their grant funds that were spent on that work site. So please keep that in mind.

Another pitfall, not ensuring your work sites are within the service area as described in the statement of work. Now, we give some leniency in terms of where the work site is located. In the Funding Opportunity Announcement this year we asked you to provide your target service areas by zip codes. We said that everybody should focus on your work sites being within those zip codes. If they aren't, that may be OK as long as they are within a sufficiently reasonable distance.

We had one grantee who was trying to send their youth to a work site that was more than 60 miles away in another city. That will not qualify. When you received this award, it was because you documented not just the statement – not just the need for the participants that you were serving but also the need for that low-income housing in your community.

These are community-focused projects, and that is where you should be targeting your efforts. I mean, it's also the issue of transporting youth every day over such a long distance. There are safety concerns. There's a lot of reasons why that's not going to suffice for a qualifying work site.

And then finally, another work site pitfall that we have definitely seen is – and a lot of you did this, and it's not necessarily a problem as long as you sort of understand the danger of it. And that is tying match funds to work sites. Many of the programs get access to the work site as their in-kind donation through Habitat for Humanity or other partners.

And a couple things that can be troublesome with that is understanding, first off, that the only amount of the property value that can be tied to the match funds is the direct training that youth are involved in. And these youth participants are not journeyman workers. They're not certified electricians or plumbers.

So there may be some work that has to be done by a professional and is not done by the youth, and that work cannot be counted in terms of the value of the property toward the match. So that's one thing is accurately valuing the match when you're using work sites.

The second thing is sometimes we had programs that were too ambitious in terms of how many work sites they thought that they would get through in a three-year grant cycle, and they were anticipating using all of those work sites in terms of having sufficient match dollars from those work sites. But then they didn't use all those work sites because of rain or weather or other issues or because some of them fell through, and then they didn't have sufficient match funds.

So those are just things to be aware of. As long as you sort of know – and we're going to talk to you about addressing some of those pitfalls – but just foresight is forewarned. So we just want to make sure that you think about some of these things when you're planning any future work sites or as you're going forward with the grants as you have them right now because, again, any of these could result in disallowed costs.


OK. One quick question I see here if tiny house is considered an appropriate work site. "We plan to complete the work sites described in our application but wanted to build a tiny house as well." I think it's great that you're asking that, Dion. I will let you know that we actually will have a couple of special guest speakers toward the end of this webinar who are from grant programs, one of which is doing tiny homes.

And so certainly that can qualify, and so I will let him talk more about the tiny homes idea, which I think is a fantastic and very creative solution to work site issues. So we'll talk more about that shortly, and I know I'm probably running long here. So I probably need to move this along a little faster, and I apologize for that.

So ways to avoid your work site pitfalls. First and foremost, always talk to your federal project officer immediately the second you have any work site concerns. I need you all to understand that this is not a got you thing. The federal project officer is there to help you. We want you to be successful. It makes us successful. So please don't withhold information if you're struggling with a work site issue and you're afraid it's going to be a thing that gets you in trouble.

Our goal is to help you address any work site issues as soon as you have them. We have a lot of technical assistance. Each of you will be assigned a technical assistance coach. We want to help you address any of those issues and help brainstorm any ways that we can to help you fill in any of the gaps, if you have work sites. So definitely keep that in mind. That should be the first person you go to if you have issues.

Secondly, as soon as you have a work site in mind, immediately make sure that the first thing you do is fill out that work site form, ETA-9143 and get it to your federal project officer. It can take some time for us to review and approve them, especially if we have to send them back to you. So definitely make sure that you get them to us as soon as possible so they can be approved by the time you want to start working on them.

Finally, ensure you have the guarantee of restrictive covenant in writing with any of your partners before you start that project so you don't end up in trouble on the back end.

And have a viable plan for matching funds that does not rely on good weather, speedy building, or other unpredictable and insecure factors that come to fruition, whether it's having some backup match funds that you may or may not have to use toward this project, but you need to be aware that all of those factors could end up being things that affect your ability to access all of the planned match funds, if you don't use all of the work sites. So please keep that in mind.

One quick question I just saw here, "Will all the work sites have to qualify under restrictive covenants?" Yes. In order to to be a qualifying work site, it must have the restrictive covenant. And again, we'll talk about that in more detail shortly.

So very quickly, this is the TEGL that I mentioned earlier, Training and Employment Guidance Letter 06-15. This describes the things that I mentioned about breadth and depth and gives you some very clear examples of what would be qualifying activities and what would not. It also provides some good examples for potential work site partners, some of what we're going to talk


about today, and again, just really emphasizes what is needed to have a qualifying work site. So I'd strongly encourage all of you to review that TEGL.

And then one other important TEGL that you should be aware of, this is the TEGL that describes what are allowable construction costs. As I mentioned earlier, there are limitations on what are allowable construction costs with the YouthBuild funds. These would be things like acquisition costs are not generally allowable with YouthBuild funds. The paying for appliances that would go into a new home are not allowable with YouthBuild funds, but a lot of the materials are certainly allowable.

But you definitely want to look at that TEGL and especially the attachment that describes some of the components of construction and then describes to you whether they are always allowable or allowable with conditions or whether you need to get approval or whether they're just flat out not allowable.

So definitely look at that form again if you have questions about whether any of your materials or equipment is allowable with YouthBuild funds. Your federal project officer is the person you would want to speak to.

OK. I am now going to turn it over to Ted Roan to talk about some additional work site factors to be aware of. Ted.

TED ROAN: Great. Thanks, Jenn. So that's a lot of information; right? That's a ton of stuff that she went through, but it's very valuable and very needed. So thanks, everyone, for joining. I hope this was going to be very useful not only for the brand-new grantees but for existing people, for new staff members, and people just who need a little refresher. So I think this is a lot of good information.

So what Jenn was covering there are some very vital things. What we're going to look at next is some of just a checklist here, and if you have this minimized, like Jenn suggested, if you'll just maximize that at the top right corner, you can see the full screen. But just a quick short checklist of things that you may just have at arm's reach to look at and say, OK. Are we – what is the materials list that we're going to need? What is the scope of work that Jenn mentioned? Tools and equipment, everything to do this job efficiently and that the members, that the trainees get the most out of this training program. So that's important.

As it mentions here, the safety plan is required. It's included in the attachments down below this slide under the file share. That's included so you can download a safety – a sample safety plan. So just look through this. See what you need. See what maybe you haven't been able to put together, and pull that up. All of our contact information, our resources are at the end of this presentation.

So if you need any help with this, shoot me a quick e-mail and I have samples of this and hopefully I can guide you in the right direction. But this is a quick little work site checklist to have in place, the construction trainers, what has to be done to get them ramped up, to have them


ready. We also have a resource at YouthBuild USA, "How to Run a Successful Construction Work Site."

So all of these things you can just look through, check the list, and what you don't have already in place, find the best resource for that, whether it's the Department of Labor office, whether it's someone at YouthBuild USA. Make sure and get ahold of us, and we can provide you with that construction compensation guidelines, whether it's in your area, whether it's the contingency plan, which we're going to get into here pretty quickly.

One of the things that Jenn just mentioned was about the qualifying work site – does it have to comply with all of these in this TEGL? Does it have to do those things? Now what we're looking at is, does it have to comply with Davis-Bacon?

And if you looked at your grant, then this says that it must comply with the prevailing wage in your area. It's a lot of text here and I'm not going to read through this but it basically says, if you are using federal funds on your work site in the excess of $2,000, then you must comply with Davis-Bacon, which is the prevailing wages.

What I want to highly, extremely emphasize here is that you should connect with your local wage and hour office to get some guidance from them because it may differ from region to region. So definitely contact your local wage and hour office closest to you. There are some exemptions associated with this, but again, there's not a blanket statement that can be given for this Davis-Bacon. So contact your local office.

And again, this just reiterates what that previous slide says, but that the employees – that the people working on this project must be paid the prevailing wage. So again, go to this website here that it says at the bottom of this slide and access that and contact your local wage and hour office. That's one of the most important things.

Restrictive covenants that Jenn mentioned earlier that every YouthBuild site has to comply with, that says that that has to be done when you get your CO, the certificate of occupancy. But if you don't have that understanding going in when you fill out this work site form, then we don't want any surprises and we don't want you to have any surprises when you get to the signing and then all of a sudden there's a restriction for the restrictive covenant.

So we don't want there to be any conflict in that. So just like it says here, the YouthBuild projects require a five-year restrictive covenant. For those of you who have had a previous YouthBuild grant, you know that that used to be 10 years, and through the WIOA and just I guess last year, that was reduced to five years. So that limits the sale or lease of the project to only low-income individuals or families. So no matter what the project is, it has to comply with this restrictive covenant.

So make sure that that is understood up front with your building partner so that you can have – whether it's for new construction, for site control, whatever it is, it has to comply with this. So like it says in the bottom, the last bullet there, the burden is on the grantee to ensure partners are


aware of the restrictive covenant and willing to agree to it before undertaking construction projects.

Just underlining what I mentioned is that have that done up front so that there's no question that what the outcome is, that it's a five-year restrictive covenant, meaning that it must be sold or leased to a low-income person. If the original leaser or buyer is to move out or break the lease. Then it must be passed on to a low-income occupant.

Here, if you are not aware of the regulations and compliance measures for safety, is that it's required that the YouthBuild trainees include OSHA safe work practices under OSHA and NIOSH. If you're not familiar with NIOSH, it has that in the language. NIOSH is basically the recommending body, the compliance body, and then OSHA actually puts the standards into place.

So this is something where I just want to be very clear where it doesn't require you to deliver an OSHA 10 card but you must comply with OSHA standards. And the best way to do that is to know what the OSHA rules are, therefore, being OSHA authorized to deliver the OSHA 10 or the 30 card. So we have a group of YouthBuild trainers going through that training right now and getting their OSHA 500 card so that they can deliver that to the YouthBuild students.

A safety plan is required for all DOL grantees. Again, there is a sample safety plan attached here under the file share. So you can download that, look at that. If you need any help with that, again, reach out to me and I'll help you as much as I can but just check that out, the attached safety plan and it will give you some guidance.

You can also partner with a local OSHA provider to deliver the OSHA 10 if you do not have or you don't have any plans to deliver the OSHA 10. A lot of fire departments, a lot of community partners, construction companies have OSHA trainers on site, and that makes a really good partnership where you can ensure that your students have that safety training.

I know in certain states that Home Depot actually pays new workers $3 per hour more for students who come in with their OSHA 10 card. So while it's not required that OSHA 10 card be delivered, it is definitely a leverage point for job placement. So make sure that you look at that and make sure you understand what the requirements are.

So we're going to move into credentials, and let me back up one slide. Really quickly on this safety, all three of the most widely used construction credentials have a very comprehensive safety component in them that satisfies the requirements of Department of Labor and YouthBuild, but they don't necessarily deliver the OSHA 10 card. So there's a different level. So we're going to talk about those different credentials and what they offer, and I believe that Eva –

EVA BLAKE: Can you hear me, Ted?

MR. ROAN: – Eva Blake is going to take over this next slide, and she's going to talk about those credentials.


MS. BLAKE: Thank you, Ted. Just wanted to make sure I was off mute correctly here.

MR. ROAN: You are.

MS. BLAKE: All right. So what do we need to know about delivering construction credentials to YouthBuild students? First, we need to know, what is a credential, and which credentials satisfy DOL's requirements for credential outcomes? There are two documents that go into detail on this. One is the TEGL 35-12 that is referenced here, and the other is a prior TEGL, TELG 15-10.

As Jenn mentioned, TEGL stands for the Training and Employment Guidance Letter that are put out by DOL for guidance on important program practices like these, and they're all linked at the end of this presentation so that you can click on those links and go straight to it. Here I'm just going to give you a boiled down version with some of the most critical information.

So a credential is the umbrella term that includes all postsecondary degrees, diplomas, licenses, certificates, and certifications, but not all of these are acceptable outcomes for students of DOL YouthBuild grantees. The key definition that distinguishes acceptable credentials for DOL is one that documents "an individual's attainment of measurable, technical, or occupational skills necessary to obtain employment or advance within an occupation."

So TEGL 35-12 was written to clarify this definition specifically for YouthBuild grantees, and it features three credentials that are nationally recognized as qualifying credentials for grantees. These are NCCER, HBI's PACT, and the North America Building Trades Multi-Craft Core Curriculum. Now, these are all acronyms, and on the next slide we're going to go into those in a little bit more detail. BPI's credentials are also nationally recognized, but we may soon no longer be offering them at YouthBuild USA's train the trainer events.

So certifications that are also commonly earned by YouthBuild students but do not alone demonstrate the employment-specific skills and therefore do not qualify include things such as CPR, OSHA 10, Hazmat, lead abatement, asbestos removal, and others. So the best way to ensure that you have qualifying credentials, number one, the easy thing is to go with those that are nationally recognized by DOL and promoted through our train the trainer events.

But if you have any questions, you can read through these TEGLs in detail, and you can also contact your FPO or any of your YouthBuild TA providers and as well as local workforce investment boards and state agencies can help you determine if something meets the definition for a qualifying credential. So on the slide that you see here Ted's actually going to give you a little bit more detail about these credentials that are offered at national DOL YouthBuild training events as soon as he gets off mute.

MR. ROAN: Thank you. Sorry. I was on mute.


So yes. So these are the three and, as Eva mentioned, the BPI, we'll probably be phasing out that support of the BPI training. Not to say that it won't be recognized, but that maybe we won't support that through DOL and YouthBuild.

So just to quickly go through these, the NCCER, as Eva mentioned, is an acronym for the National Center for Construction Education and Research. That is a nationally-recognized curriculum. Very comprehensive all the way starting with safety, which is a requirement, as you all know, because you read the grant that safety component must be delivered before the students ever go on site. So that must be done first of all. First and foremost, we want them to be safe on site.

Then the Home Builders Institute, the HBI-PACT, and the MC3, the Multi-Craft Core Curriculum are the three most widely used curriculum in the YouthBuild network. The NCCER and the HBI-PACT are the two most widely used, and those dovetail very nicely together. They both have safety, construction math, tools and materials, and employability as their core components of their curriculum, and then you have an option of going into some specific trade skills. They both require about 85 hours of content or of contact hours, I should say, and then you submit students for their certificate and then you receive a card or certificate from the provider of the curriculum.

The National Center for Construction Education and Research, the NCCER, the agreement with them is covered – just I want to go through some financial obligations just so you're fully aware – is covered through YouthBuild. So once you go through the training, you're a qualified construction instructor who must have at least five years of journey level construction experience to qualify as an instructor. Once he goes through the certification training, he or she goes through there, then that person is qualified to teach, and there is no cost from then on to receive the certifications.

The PACT curriculum, the HBI-PACT curriculum is also very comprehensive. Goes through all of those components like I just said, and those units, when you submit for a certificate, your grantee program must have a license agreement with HBI, which costs about – which costs $1500 a year, and the submission for certificates is $75 for the first 30 certificates and then $100 after 30 certificates. I know it makes no sense in volume pricing, but that's their policy within HBI. So $75 for the first 30. Then $100 after the first 30. So that's what the – that's the cost of submitting for the HBI.

The Multi-Craft Core Curriculum, as you see there on the slide, it's a little more intensive as far as the amount of contact hours. It's about 120 contact hours for the MC3, and both – let me back up just a little bit. For the NCCER and the HBI-PACT there are two compliance mechanisms in both of those. One is a written test, and one is a performance measurement for both curriculum so that the student must demonstrate comprehension through the written test and then must demonstrate competency with the performance test in both of those curriculum. In the MC3 there is definitely the written, the comprehension component.

However, there is no built-in competency component. So there's no hands on. This was designed through organized labor through the AFLCIO for trades individuals in an


apprenticeship program. So it was designed more along a sit-down classroom-based curriculum. So there's no built-in component. They encourage us to use a hands-on component, but again, there's nothing built in.

The BPI, while it's mentioned there and we currently support programs doing that, we are in the process of phasing that out. So I won't talk too much about that, but it is an industry-recognized credential. So if you wanted to do that on your own, a lot of hands on, a lot of contextualized learning there. If you're doing weatherization or energy auditing work, it's a very good program. It just – we're transitioning out of that and going and focusing on these other two.

So I know that's a lot of information again, if you have any questions about that. So the question just – the question's right there. So, Jeannine (sp), yes. $75 each, $100 after 30. So you're not required to use these listed here. These are ones that we support, that Department of Labor and YouthBuild USA support as far as training capacity. We have an NCCER training starting next week, actually, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. So if you do not have a certified training and you're interested in the NCCER, it's not too late. Lan and Milah (sp) will take your registration, and we can get you fixed up. But no. You're not required to use these. However, they do have to be an industry-recognized credential to qualify as a credential. And as Eva mentioned, there's a difference between a credential and a certificate. It has to be more comprehensive. As Jenn mentioned earlier, it has to cross over in phases of the work, and it has to be more than two of those phases. So it has to be more comprehensive.

What is the difference between – (inaudible) – in terms of hands on? So between the PACT and the NCCER, they're both very contextualized applied learning. So they're both very much focused on hands-on learning. They are very aligned now. Where they used to be a little bit apples to oranges, they're very aligned now.

So I would say the hands-on component for both the HBI and the NCCER are equivalent. Both require you to have a hands-on component as well as the comprehension, which is the written test because – yeah. So a few veteran programs out there who have used HBI in the past. HBI now requires there to be written testing where in the past you just had to comply with the SAR, the Skill Achievement Records.

Now, you a have to comply with the written test and as well as the performance test with HBI, and that has long been the standard with NCCER. So they're very much well-aligned.

OK. I know I spent a little bit more time on that, and I believe Jenn is going to take us through some construction plus details.

MS. SMITH: Actually, I was going to turn it over to Eva, unless you would prefer me –

MR. ROAN: All right. Fantastic.

MS. BLAKE: Yes. Yes. So what is construction plus? We talked about it a little bit so far. Construction plus is the name that we use to refer to non-construction and additional career trade tracks that result in qualifying credentials. So as you heard from Jenn, the construction training


is necessary but now you are also able to add on additional career tracks and that's what's considered construction plus.

With the many choices that are available, programs need to weigh the education skill level of entering students in terms of selecting which ones that they should offer. It may be valuable to have all the youth complete the basic construction curriculum that you've selected in order to attain credentials, especially if a diploma or equivalency degree is unlikely for that student.

But there are several models being used, and a few of those are what is listed on this slide where some programs have youth complete the construction and then move on to construction plus or in some programs some youth go straight to the construction plus but it's important that you are in compliance with the amount of training that needs to go on for all students in construction.

And on the next slide it shows you which TEGL you should read for further information about construction plus models. This TEGL will help you in determining which credentials you might like to offer, which other career plans that you'd like to put in place at your program. It provides information about selecting and also implementing those models, and that is TEGL 07-14.

It has a very helpful resource for you to use in researching local labor market data, which will help you to determine high-demand careers that are in your area. And it also has a considerations attachment similar to a checklist of what you need to know in considering which industries you might like to include on top of construction.

And now, we come to a poll question for all of you. So you should see on your screen now that the presentation has gotten smaller and there is now a little dial – radio dial box where you can select your own answer. So go right ahead and click your best answer for, how can you satisfy the construction project requirement in your statement of work?

And it looks like the vast majority of you are putting in that you can do this through a combination of above, and you are correct. Nobody selected build your own project, although that is included in the combination of above, I would imagine, for those of you who selected that. But this is interesting here. Habitat for Humanity gets three votes, CDC partnership one, and partner with a Housing Authority one.

I think it is important to understand that these are all different examples of partnerships or the option of building your own project, and they are all viable. You can do a combination of them. You can do one of them, and a little bit later in the presentation we're going to get into contingency plans and why it's important for you to understand all of your options that are available.

So with that I will give it up to Jenn. Actually, I think I'm doing this first slide here for contingency plans. So contingency plans. The only way to recover from a loss of planned work site is to make sure that you already have the next work site in position.

So in other words, as soon as you know what your work site is and it's been approved, it's still work time. It's important to have a plan B in place before you need it, essentially. Work sites


falling through has been an issue for grantees, and obviously it's something that does take a lot of time and effort to establish a work site even.

Once you've established the partnership and the relationship with the owner of the work site, you still have the forms and all of the other factors to get through before it is approved by DOL for you to get started on the work. So we really want to emphasize just having that plan B in place and considering it sort of a pipeline of projects.

And of course it's difficult to project timelines and what you can rely on, but that's also a reason why it's very important to have a few different partners, have a few different work sites that are in various stages of being in your pipeline or at least staying in touch so that it is a viable option if and when your current work site does fall through.

And you'll see on this slide – I'm not going to read for you, but sometimes these work sites might come in in unexpected places. Various community partnerships, maybe even employment or internship placements partnerships could offer up or connect you with someone that may have a work site available for you. So keep those in mind. And now, Jenn's going to tell you a little – help you out with a little bit, if your work site does fall through, what do you do there to handle that.

MS. SMITH: Thanks, Eva. So yeah. So importantly, sometimes it's going to happen. You had a work site planned, and it's no longer available to you for a variety of reasons. And so while you're working on some of the information that Eva shared on the previous slide about how to figure out your next work site or maybe you have that work site in mind but you're still waiting for it to get approved by the Department of Labor, what are some things for you to think about.

The fact is, as I mentioned very early on, at least 40 percent of the curriculum that you offer your youth should be focused on that vocational training. So that doesn't just mean the hands-on work experience, though, of course. It can also mean that the construction lab and classroom work that you do. So obviously those are areas that you can continue to focus on to ensure that your youth are still learning the industry-recognized certification program that you were using for construction.

You could also focus on smaller projects. We've had many grantees who did things like build bird houses or sheds or a children's playhouse for a public park, things like that that would not qualify for the work site but are still valuable experiences in terms of giving them hands-on construction work.

Additionally, there may be other community service opportunities that you could engage with such as things I mentioned earlier like a gazebo or a porch, things like that that are still both giving back to the community still and also looking forward in terms of giving youth that construction experience that they need.

But additionally, the thing that we really want to focus on here – said it before; I'm going to keep saying it because I feel like it cannot be said enough – is to make sure that you are connecting


with your federal project officer right away when you're – when the work site is falling through or when you think it might fall through.

That's definitely the point at which you want to talk with them and think about some next steps and then also engage with your TA coach to help figure out some ways so that you're not going it alone. That's the key point here. We want to help you figure out how to get some work sites that will work for you. So please do keep that in mind.

All right. I am going to turn it back over to Ted who's briefly going to speak about some best practices before we get to our fantastic guest speakers who I'm sure you guys really want to hear from. So please bear with us. Ted?

MR. ROAN: Thanks, Jenn. So yes. As Jenn mentioned, I want to get through here really quickly, guys, because we have two really fantastic guest speakers on here, people who have been with the YouthBuild network for a while and have had some great experiences. So talking about the best practices, out on site how some of these things affect the success of your work site.

So really quickly, if you'll answer these questions for me. What are the best practices in a construction training? So as you see there, they have an impact on the neighborhood, partners committed to the YouthBuild training mission, construction staff are not involved in the mental toughness. Is that a best practice? The project will accommodate the program cohort, and participants allowed only one hour for lunches. Is that a best practice or allowed a full hour, depending on how you want to word that?

OK. Looks like we have most people responding now. And yes. I think the first one is absolutely. We have 87, 88 percent of people, and I think it can be a combination; right. The projects have an impact on the immediate neighborhood. Yes. As well as the partners committed to the YouthBuild training mission. David Clauss is going to talk to us here in a minute about the American Youth Works in Austin, Texas, about that partnership, and I think one of the great things that they do there is have partners who are committed to YouthBuild's training mission.

So thank you, guys, for participating in that, and yes. I think there's a couple that maybe you wouldn't want to answer a best practice, and that would be construction staff are not involved in mental toughness. I think that's an essential point that construction staff are involved, that they get to bond and they get to know the students before going out on the site and, depending on what your schedule allows, how much time the students get for lunch, whether that's a good thing, whether it's required, or whether that gives them the opportunity to do other things.

OK. So moving on to the next slide is energy efficiency and green building. That's something that I have had a great professional development in as opportunities at the program that I worked with and with YouthBuild USA. And so here's some of the – just a comparison here is some of the challenges, the myths, the learning curve, the cost, the time, and the partner limitation.


Those in the past have been more of a challenge than they are now, but I think some partners maybe don't understand that. And we are here to help you build those strategies and those competencies and overcome some of those myths. The benefits that you'll see here, positive environment, public visibility with partner engagement, reduced living expenses. So the people who could least afford to have higher energy bills, unfortunately, are the people who are stuck with it because of a reduction in attention to green building and the health and safety that goes with it.

So while this is an extremely important slide and I'd love to talk – matter of fact, I've been doing some green – (inaudible) – the last three days. So I could spend about three days on this slide, but I won't. I want to move ahead, but if you have any questions about this, please let me know how I can help and how the green initiative can help you with your program.

ENERGY STAR, I think, Eva, are you going to talk about this slide? OK. So looks like I'm going to talk about this one. So ENERGY STAR is one of the – is like that first initial step that you can incorporate into your project, especially if you're doing new construction, where you can build green and understand some of the benefits of that and without much third-party involvement and with a lot of support through the ENERGY STAR compliance.

You'll see, again, if you go on the full screen here, you can see what those websites are. You can follow that link. I would highly encourage you, if you don't already have a green component, to look at that. I know programs out in the west, the California Code is very high and there may be some local, regional green compliance standards.

One of the thing that Jenn mentioned earlier about what things are qualifying for a work site, while deconstruction is not one of them, it is a growing interest in a lot of programs, and students get a lot out of it. There are national certifications out there for deconstruction now.

We at YouthBuild USA and Department of Labor have put a lot of time into looking at deconstruction, but if that is a focus – I know in some communities that is a large focus of their work site is the deconstruction.

So just remember, if that's something that's going on in your community, that deconstruction, not demolition, can be the focus. And so I think now we're going to do one more little question, one more poll and to ask you your feedback on this and we're going to move on to our guest speakers.

So the question is, what other vocational training opportunity would enhance your construction component? Green building, radon, deconstruction, preservations – we have several YouthBuild programs that are conservation course – apprenticeship placement, or general industry.

So the reason that this general industry is on here is because a lot of programs that are doing the general – I'm sorry – doing the construction plus, those, whether it's manufacturing or CNA, certified nursing assistant, there's a whole different set of safety standards that may come into play other than construction. So the safety requirements are different for construction plus than they are for regular construction.


All right. Overwhelmingly green building, and I will – Eva and I love to hear that. So the apprenticeship placement, and that's something that we've actually put a lot of effort into as well. Thank you for responding to that, and that means a lot to us that you guys take the time to respond to that because we pay a lot of attention to this when we get feedback from the field.

And now, moving on to the next slide, I want to introduce David Clauss who is a program director for American Youth Works where I spent 16 years working with American Youth Works with a great program there. So, David.

DAVID CLAUSS: Sixteen long years.

MR. ROAN: Seemed like a second to me.

MR. CLAUSS: Anyway, well, thanks a lot, Ted. It's great to be here with everyone and to talk about our construction program here at the American Youth Works YouthBuild program in wonderful Austin, Texas. And we've been doing construction training as part of YouthBuild as long as YouthBuild has been a national program since the mid '90s.

And for the majority of that time we ran basically our own construction company. We had a full-service construction training program that involved everything from buying lots locally, building from the ground up, and then reselling those homes to affordable housing through HUD's 80 percent of MFI standards.

But as the years have gone by, that's become more and more challenging in the local economy to maintain that model of a training program just because, as Austin continues to grow, building affordable housing becomes more challenging. Rising land prices, pressures from gentrification, more focus on multi-family housing have continued to limit our ability to pursue that model of building single-family homes for the affordable housing market.

And so over the last 10 years we have definitely seen the writing on the wall that, while we would be able to continue this on a smaller scale, but we definitely needed to diversify our construction sites in order to continue and sustain our program. And so as we looked for new partners to create new construction sites, we've tried a number of different things.

Some have worked better than others. We've tried through the city of Austin's low-income home repair program doing home repair. We've had weatherization programs, and these provided some great working opportunities for young people. They certainly create a very meaningful service experience for the students, but there are certainly challenges to taking a group of raw recruits, young people into someone's home and trying to do home repairs in there.

If you're working with students with criminal background issues, certainly a component of many YouthBuild programs, if you're going into people's homes, there can be challenges with that. So that was a challenge for us. Also, we tried partnering with the local parks department building residences for the park rangers on their homes. Again, qualifying that as affordable housing seemed to be a challenge for us, although it was a great working environment for the students.


We also tried working with the Housing Authority and they were a great partner as well but the projects they had for us tended to be pretty repetitive. They wanted us to, say, just install drywall in unit after unit after unit, and it was hard to get that breadth and depth thing that DOL is looking for. So anyway, we tried a number of things.

One of the things that we finally landed on is partnering with a local non-profit called Mobile Loaves and Fishes. And if we can move that next slide along, I forget if I'm able to do that or not. Oh, there it goes. Whoop. Too many. Back up one. Oh, there we are. All right.

So Mobile Loaves and Fishes is a local non-profit. They started, say, about 10 years ago. They're a faith-based organization working with the chronically homeless. They started out running food trucks, distributing food and bottled water to homeless individuals, and their mission has grown from there. And a few years ago – about five years ago – they acquired a large tract of land northeast of Austin where they wanted to build a micro home village for chronically homeless individuals that were living on the streets of Austin.

And so we actually were brought together with them through the – or we'd been talking to them off and on but then working with some Bank of America funding through YouthBuild USA's green initiative, they wanted us to arrange a volunteer project for Bank of America individuals. And so we ended up taking them out to the Mobile Loaves and Fishes and doing some work on micro homes out there, and the partnership has grown from there.

So somebody asked earlier about micro homes, and they really have proven to be a great training environment for us. But just to back up half a second, I'll say the keys to building a successful partnership – and this has been a great partnership for us – is just the mission alignment. You have the strong commitment to service. They really believe in YouthBuild and what we're doing, and they also believe in community solutions.

They're trying to create a community to solve the issues of homelessness, and of course the YouthBuild program tries to create a community of young people working to overcome their challenges. And so the two agencies really resonate together around a common mission.

And so another thing is the micro homes provide that wide range, that breadth and depth of construction activities in a small package so you're able to do everything from the foundation up, including doors and windows, siding, roofing, on and on, insulation, a little bit of everything. They don't have any plumbing but we actually can do the wiring on them so they're gaining some experience doing electrical work.

So they're able to get that breadth of it, and it's also in a small package so that they can see a project completed from beginning to end, which sometimes on a bigger project, a student may come in, get their GED, get a placement before they ever see a big house completed. So it's kind of great in that respect.

Another great part of this partnership has been that we can have a whole YouthBuild crew out there working together led by a YouthBuild construction trainer who has – not only knows


construction but has been trained in the skills needed to work successfully with opportunity youth. That's made a big difference for us.

I know sometimes in the past that working with some great folks out at Habitat for Humanity we had some volunteers out there who maybe knew a lot about construction but didn't quite have the patience to work with some of our young people. So that led to challenges. But for us it's been more successful when we can have our staff working with our young people.

Another thing is the flexible schedule. There are deadlines, but it's not the kind of deadlines you face when you're fixing somebody's home. If you're in there and you've torn up their bathroom and you're trying to get tile in, taking time to teach and make a few mistakes and do it over, boy, that can be challenging.

It's also challenging if somebody's up in the attic doing insulation and they step on some old drywall. All of a sudden you've got a big hole in their ceiling and a big mess on their living room floor. Those are some of the challenges, but in this kind of environment they have that flexible schedule where we have deadlines but they understand it's a training mission.

They understand if we have to take days off for school holidays or what have you, and so they're willing to work with us on that. And so it's not that kind of go, go, go production atmosphere that can lead to safety problems and not doing enough teaching. So that's been something that's really helped us to make this a successful partnership.

My only fear is it's going to end too soon because it's been great, and again, it's a wonderful thing. You can see that our young people there with Mayor Steve Adler, it's just a project that every time we talk about it, we get more local support. So it's great not only in terms of the quality of training we're able to deliver there but also in terms of the image it creates for YouthBuild in the community.

And so it's really been a win-win partnership for us, and I do know that lately they've been having more and more people come from across the country to look at the work that they're doing, that we're doing out there. And so if anybody's interested, I will send out probably through Ted or something if they're starting up some new projects outside of Austin. And I think that should cover it for me.

MR. ROAN: Great. Thanks, David. So we're going to move on to Frank. He's going to – Frank, are you there?

FRANK MANGIAGLI: Yes. I am, Ted.

MR. ROAN: OK. Take it away.

MR. MANGIAGLI: OK. Hi, everyone. My name is Frank Mangiagli. I'm with YouthBuild in Hartford, Connecticut, Capital City YouthBuild, and what we've been working with the students with the green initiative and teaching them green building and building green on most of our sites. Some of our sites were spread out quite a distance.


So we focused on two mainly. We were allowed to go on three this year, but we focused on two because they were a little closer to each other. So it worked out well, but what we mainly focused on or I mainly focused on with the students is starting out as soon as I get them about teaching them about the environment. And most of them pick up on it right away, and it even started with one of them throwing some trash out the window.

And I stopped and said, we have to pick that up. And so even starting from there started me introducing them to being green as we're building, and whether it's reusing the two by fours that people throw out in the dumpster, which you can use for blocking, all the way to all the nails and screws that are on the floor that we reuse and pick up. So you can save quite a bit of money, which I teach them, if they do want to start their own business, the funds they can save being green is enormous and adds up over time. So those are some of the things that I show them.

We have partnered up with Mutual Housing, which has been fantastic. We worked about 11 months on a project where they had seven units with six apartments in each unit. They were all ENERGY STAR rated for appliances, windows, love VOCs in the paint and all that. So it was great for me to teach the youth as I was on the site with them for those projects. That was fantastic because they could see firsthand where green is involved, and it just – it can be endless as you go along and the more you learn about it, even the more I learned about it. So those things were valuable to them.

They also – learning to reuse water and using rain barrels. I know Habitat had a house that they had rain barrels installed to water their lawns as part of it, which the kids really enjoyed, never thinking of it. We think our water just comes down the down spouts, but you can really reuse it quite efficiently, whether it's in a garden or anywhere. And also insulation of course and sealing the inside of the building with caulk, which they're doing, which I built homes 30 years ago and we never did that.

And now, the couple of projects we did with Habitat, we were in the building with the youth and just sealing all the cracks on the inside, which I wasn't privy to. So I learned that also along with them. So sealing all the joints between the headers and on the outside – on the inside of the walls but the outside of the building also where the top plates meet the roof line and so on and the sill plates. So that was beneficial, and of course wrapping it and insulation and the energy efficient windows and sealing around the windows also. Those were great tools for them.

I know Ted had mentioned deconstruction, not demolition, and that's something I've been doing for many years. Reusing can, like I said, save you so much money. I had my own business many years ago, and I show the youth that you can go on a work site.

If some of the youth – I had a youth start his own business, and I said, if you're short lumber or you're short blocking, you go on to a site someone's working on and ask them, you guys throwing that out, and they say yes, go dumpster diving. I'm not proud. I'd jump right in there. The money you can save is enormous, whether it's a half a sheet of plywood or so on. You don't have to drive to Home Depot, spend the fuel. All that constitutes green. You're not spending the


time going to get it, and you're reusing it and putting it back into place. So that goes a long way also.

So I mentioned Mutual Housing and the Hartford Housing Authority who we worked with, and as David previously mentioned, that has not worked out so well. Just as David mentioned, I came across the same problem, kind of repetitive stuff. So we did kind of move away from there and went to the Mutual.

I see this photo that's up now has one of my students sealing and putting in some blocking for drywall on the inside of the building, which we were using – it wasn't a caulk. It was a sealant, almost like a buel (sp) caulk to seal those joints that they used. That was a Habitat home, and she's putting in blocking there on that one.

And then here I have another student who's actually pointing to the work she did when I was taking the picture. They were really proud after they were done, obviously. So she's pointing to the sealant that she put in. Some of them, obviously, never even used a caulk gun. You need to show them correctly because, if they don't shut it off right away, it's squirting out the bottom, and you know how that goes.

So she was real happy to get that done and did a great job. And the insulation – and besides the caulk, but the insulation between the base where the rafters meet the top plates, they also did a lot of that too, which keeps the energy in the home, which again goes back to green building.

So anybody who would like to ask me any questions, want to open it up to questions.

MR. ROAN: Great. Thanks, Frank. I think – yeah. I think we want to move along and get to the question and answer portion, and I think we're going to run – Jenn, I don't know if you want to jump in here. I think we're going to run pretty close to time. So if everyone can stay on to participate in question and answer, if you have that time, that would be great. I think we're going to move along to the next.

MS. SMITH: Yeah. We're going to turn it over to our moderator, Michelle, at this point just for our last couple of slides. So thank you all.

MS. LEE-JONES: OK. Thanks, Jenn. We definitely are running out of time, but we do want to ask you guys to stay on a little longer. And I want to let you guys know that this webinar is recorded, and you will be able to obtain all of the resources and the related materials that you can actually review once it's uploaded.

Now, we will turn over to the Q&A.

MS. SMITH: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

MR. ROAN: OK.


MS. SMITH: As Michelle mentioned, there are some resource slides we included at the end, but since you can – you can download the webinar and all those have hyperlinks. So it's probably best to just pull them from the actual slides. We're going to get to the questions because of the time issue. So let's see. What questions haven't we answered? Sorry. I think we have them right here.

So the first question we had was just a – I think I'd answered this, and somebody asked it again I think in a slightly different way, which was the question around, "Is it one house per year or the entire time of the grant?"

And I believe this is referencing again the issue I mentioned about the base line, if you're doing construction plus, that the minimum sufficient level of houses – housing units that must be completed during the life cycle of your grant is one house. And that is one house in the entire grant period, and I know that seems shocking.

We set it that low because we wanted to allow programs who were doing construction plus to – if they're only having – we were trying to envision a scenario where we might have a program where most of the youth are going directly into some other in-demand industry and only a handful of youth are being trained in construction.

I know that someone mentioned that it's best to have all the youth do construction, and I will say that most construction plus programs do have all the youth go through construction before they go into the other industries. But if they didn't, we wanted to be able to say what's sufficient so that we're not completely losing that wonderful component of YouthBuild that is that low-income housing construction and that giving back to the community and that soft skills development that happens on the construction work site.

So that is why we set the bar as low as we did that you just have to complete at least one unit. But again, if you are training a lot of youth in construction, every one of those youth has to have a decent depth and breadth of construction experience on a work site, and one housing unit during the entire three-year grant cycle will not get you there. So please just understand that guidance for what it is and the limitations on it.

OK. Second question here was just, when Ted was talking about Davis-Bacon, somebody asked if Davis-Bacon applies to youth if our model was based on stipends. So I just want to add a little clarity here because I think there's a lot of confusion that happens with Davis-Bacon and related acts.

We are currently working on guidance that will be put out through a Training and Employment Guidance Letter hopefully before the end of the year that goes into a little more detail because we were asked a lot during the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking period with our final rule under WIOA about Davis-Bacon and providing more detail.

The fact is Davis-Bacon is actually managed out of a different agency than ETA. We are not the compliance or regulatory body for Davis-Bacon. That's Wage and Hour Division. But what I can tell you about Davis-Bacon is that the idea behind it was to ensure that on federally funded


construction projects that trained and qualified construction professionals were not being undercut by using people who were still being trained in construction who would not need to draw the same salary.

The whole idea here is to protect workers who have years of experience and who have gone through registered apprenticeship and are journey workers from being cut out of federal construction projects. It's a very purposeful and thoughtful legislation. It does get very confusing, and I know there's often a lot of frustration with some of our grantees when you're trying to work on a federally funded project and you run up against that prevailing wage.

The thing to understand is the prevailing wage issue with Davis-Bacon has nothing to do with how you run your YouthBuild program and whether you offer stipends or wages. It is a federal mandate that says you must pay a prevailing journey worker wage if you are having your youth work on a construction work site that is under the requirements of Davis-Bacon.

And there are some exceptions to Davis-Bacon where, even with federal funding, it doesn't rise to the level of requiring the prevailing wage. And we get into some of that in our Davis-Bacon guidance that will be coming out, but again, it has nothing to do with the kind of payment structure you have in your YouthBuild program.

If you are working on one of these federally funded projects that triggers prevailing wages through Davis-Bacon, you would have to pay the prevailing wage to your YouthBuild participants while they're working on that work site, regardless of anything having to do with how you structured your YouthBuild program model. I hope that helps. I know it's a very complicated issue, and hopefully our future guidance will help as well.

Ted, I think this next one was based on – and I don't know if you know the answer to this. I'm not sure I quite understand the question, but somebody asked, "Are our subs or us going to be required to do certified payroll when we use Davis-Bacon?" I mean, that may be something that we would have to refer them to Wage and Hour Division on, unless you know that answer offhand.

MR. ROAN: No. I think that would – if they were an intern, but our partners are not paying our young people, are not paying our students. So I don't think they would fall into anything. It would fall back on the program to satisfy the Davis-Bacon requirements, if I'm understanding the question.

MS. SMITH: Yeah. I mean, that's – yeah. I mean, if you need further guidance, definitely reach out to your federal project officer, and we can connect you with the right people related to that question, which sounds a little more complicated to me than the scope of this particular webinar and again, since we're a little bit behind schedule. So we're just going to run on some next questions.

Someone asked, "Where in the regulations is the definition for the five-year restrictive covenant?"


The five-year restrictive covenant is covered in Section 688.730, and it scares me because I believe I actually have that memorized. I haven't confirmed that, but that is my memory. I don't have internet access in this room, but I'm fairly certain if you go to 688.730, that 730 of the final – the DOL only WIOA final rule Section 688 is definitely YouthBuild and it's in one of our very last sections. But I believe it is 688.730 you will find the information on the restrictive covenant requirement.

All right. And I think this next one is for you as well, Ted. "Is an NCCER an equivalent certification to a high school equivalency diploma?"

MR. ROAN: Great. So I answered Rochelle back, but just real quickly. So it is not an equivalent to a high school, but it satisfies the measures for DOL which says that they must receive their high school education, whether that's a diploma or a GED, or they must receive a certificate with an industry-recognized credential. So in that case it's an either/or. Of course every program wants to get both and even more than that, but it does satisfy that deliverable for an industry-recognized credential.

MS. SMITH: Yeah. I mean, yes. Yeah. What Ted said. Both of those were counted under the same indicator. So if the youth gets both of them, they're not going to count twice; right? It's the participants, not the number of certifications. But Ted's completely right as well that we are not trying to tell you that you should not be focused on the high school diploma or the equivalency degree because nothing else good can happen for that youth until they get it. So please know that.

Everything else, including some of the industry-recognized credentials, will spin off of them having that secondary school degree. So please do understand that that's one of the most important things you guys should be focusing on, but it does not get you extra credit to get both of them. And I'm sorry to say that. That is unfortunately just a part of the WIOA that I don't actually believe. I believe those should be disaggregated, but they weren't. So that's unfortunate.

All right. Are there any other questions that we have not responded to yet or any new questions that have come up before we sign off here?

MR. ROAN: And just remember, everyone, if you haven't seen the resource, all of our contact information is on that slide, if we can pull that one up, as well as all those resources that we just had there. There we go. There's Jenn Smith, Eva Blake, and we can take a screenshot of that or write that down. And there's myself, David, and Frank's information.

I saw a couple of questions there. David, if you're still on, get ready. Looks like people are very interested in the micro houses, the tiny homes. So there's David's information. Frank has a lot of information and experience with the partnerships, with the community partnerships. So if you're looking to reach out to Frank, there's his information as well.

Michelle, is there anything you want to close with?


MS. LEE-JONES: Yes. I just want to remind you guys that we have an upcoming webinar, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and YouthBuild on November the 1st from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. I encourage you guys to definitely log on and participate. Thank you.

MR. ROAN: Thanks, everyone. I appreciate you staying a few minutes late.

MS. SMITH: Absolutely. Thank you, everyone.

MS. CASERTANO: All right. I just want to thank the participants and the presenters and ask everyone to stay logged into the room for just a minute longer and give us some feedback.

(END)


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