North Idaho College grant boosts heavy equipment training for Idaho jobs
Nineteen students are in NIC’s heavy equipment class as a $299,951 federal grant opens a cheaper path into jobs Idaho builders badly need.
North Idaho College is using a $299,951 federal grant to train more heavy equipment operators. The money from the Federal Highway Administration is covering students’ cost to attend.
The college is running two five-week courses over the two-year grant period, with each class totaling 154 hours of classroom and hands-on instruction. The current session has 19 students, and NIC plans to offer the program again in the spring of 2027.
The training is aimed at filling jobs that are already in demand across construction, infrastructure, mining and timber. Heavy equipment operators are needed anywhere projects involve moving materials or earthmoving, and the Workforce Training Center serves more than 5,000 students each year through job-focused programs and apprenticeships.
Idaho Transportation Department planning documents identify one of the state’s biggest transportation challenges as meeting the needs of a rapidly growing population and an aging highway system. Idaho was the second-fastest-growing state in the last decade, based on the 2020 Census, and its seven-year transportation investment program is built around traffic volumes, crash data and public input.
ITD’s Transportation Expansion & Congestion Mitigation program fast-tracks corridor improvements that boost safety, mobility and economic opportunity, while the department’s broader Leading Idaho effort backs critical state infrastructure investments.
Simmons, one of the students in the current class, is moving out of restaurant work and into a different career path. He already has an associate degree in business management and hopes to own a business someday, but the safety instruction has been especially valuable because it taught him things he did not know about protecting himself on the job.
The Highway Construction Workforce Partnership was created to increase the capacity and capability of the highway construction workforce by identifying, training, placing and retaining workers. In Idaho, that pipeline includes certifications in heavy equipment operation, hazardous waste operations and emergency response. In Idaho, 92% of trainees graduated and 80% got construction jobs in 2022, according to FHWA.
NIC’s push also comes after the Workforce Training Center celebrated more than 130 apprenticeship graduates in a June 4 ceremony.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
