New Orleans, Louisiana, which is still recovering from 2005's devastating Hurricane Katrina, is also embracing green construction. Because so much of the city is still being rebuilt, policies encouraging green building are gaining a lot of political traction there. In fact, green construction projects are springing up everywhere. Employment in green construction is turning into a great career choice. Demand for skills in green construction practices is widely predicted to continue growing over the next decade. In America alone, 15 million new buildings are expected to be built by the year 2015, and most of them will be specifically built for energy efficiency and lower environmental footprints.
If you are interested in finding green building employment, here are some ways to go about it.
Take the Initiative
If you are a construction contractor, what can you do to make your current work greener? Perhaps you could become a local leader in installing solar panels. Can any of your vehicles be converted to run on biodiesel? Or perhaps you could become well educated on the most energy efficient home heating and cooling systems. These may be more than just suggestions. Trends indicate that people are demanding more energy efficiency and less of a carbon footprint in their new construction projects. You could be left behind if you don't improve your own record of green building practices.
Go Back to School
A short educational course could help ensure that you keep your skills at the forefront of green technology and improve your employment opportunities. LEED Professional Accreditation is managed by the Green Building Certification Institute. The United States Green Building Council provides education, references, study guides, and chapter study sessions for those pursuing LEED professional certification. The website of the U.S. Green Building Council is a great place to begin if you think you want to pursue green building credentials.
Moonlight
Local environmental organizations or organizations that build or refurbish homes for families with low incomes often welcome those with construction skills, and in many cases the projects they are working on incorporate green building techniques. Volunteer experience is still experience, and members of local organizations can make great work references when you're searching for employment in the green construction sector.
Crawl the Web
The internet is home to a huge store of information on where green building jobs are and how to get them. Message boards on green building techniques are great places to learn and to share your own knowledge. Over time, you can network with people on sites like peopleinaction.com or informedbuilding.com to pick up more skills and learn about projects and employment in other places. Being willing to relocate for green building jobs is a plus.
Keeping up with the state of technology is also easier with the help of internet resources. Green Builder Magazine online, for example, has features on products like Eco-Shake roofing made out of recycled PVC, and BASF Pervious Concrete Admixture. Green building trends will continue to grow throughout the next decade and will include making existing buildings "greener" as well as building green from scratch.
In some cases, relatively low-tech practices will come back into prominence, such as rainwater collection and the use of wind energy. As housing markets in the U.S. and around the world begin to recover from the real estate crash of 2008, green technologies in new construction and retrofitted to existing construction will give homeowners the competitive edge as the housing market heats up again.
There are more reasons than ever to learn green building techniques and capitalize on them by searching for employment in green construction projects. Most people believe that because of new awareness of over-dependence on fossil fuels, green construction and design are more than just trendy words, but that there is really no turning back to older, inefficient technologies.
