SMACNA CEO Aaron Hilger networking and speaking at a wide variety
of industry events.
A floodgate of opportunity is positioning SMACNA members for long-term success, from significant megaprojects underway to monumental legislative moves for the sheet metal industry. At the SMACNA helm is CEO Aaron Hilger, an experienced coalition builder who is committed to collaboration.
“Now is a great time to be a sheet metal contractor and member of SMACNA or SMART,” says Hilger, emphasizing a partnership founded on a shared vision for labor/management relations.
“We hope to set a national example of how organizations can work together—and we may be the only trade groups with a national leadership labor/management initiative that meet regularly to solve recruiting and retention challenges,” Hilger says of joining forces with SMART General President Mike Coleman. “Ninety percent of stuff we agree on, and the 10% we don’t cannot define us.”
Hilger adds, “This partnership is unique to the sheet metal industry and example of how you can align for the benefit of all members.”
He points to the SMART-SMACNA Megaprojects Task Force as an example of jointly supporting the implementation of these significant projects while ensuring long-term organizational stability and growth for both organizations.
“The last two years have been some of the most productive years I’ve seen since my involvement in the construction industry, which started when I was a kid,” Hilger says. “The amount of support and movement we have received from the Biden administration for the unionized construction industry is encouraging.”
Aaron Hilger with the current SMACNA Board of Directors.
Here, Hilger reflects on a series of wins for SMACNA members, including a historic overhaul of the Davis-Bacon Act to post appropriate wage rates for project labor agreements (PLAs) and SMACNA’s support of U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) proposed rules to revise the national apprenticeship system.
Success on The Hill
The sheet metal industry is growing rapidly, with average work hours increases of 3% to 7%. Those rates are substantially higher in some markets given 54 megaprojects currently underway with 190 total expected.
“This is a really good outlook, and a lot of it is driven by a need and desire to restore manufacturing to deal with and prevent future supply chain issues,” Hilger says.
Government CHIPs funding established widespread tax benefits for megaprojects, defined as at least $1 billion in investment or creating at least $75 million in new payroll.
SMACNA with SMART has been tackling inherent labor hurdles of balancing staffing across the country for bread-and-butter projects with these largescale opportunities. This includes creative initiatives to recruit new talent to the sheet metal industry
The two unionized trades organizations established the SMART-SMACNA Megaprojects Task Force with ambitious objectives it is already achieving. Those include maintaining contractors’ current customer base while staffing megaprojects as needed, along with developing structures to recruit workers. The task force is also focused on supporting training to ensure high-quality workers and initiating long-term efforts to sustain a vital, growing industry once megaprojects are completed.
“Our Megaprojects Task Force has done a great job of recruiting for these projects,” Hilger says.
During the last two years, Hilger dived in deep into regulatory and legislative advocacy with Stan Kolbe, longtime Capitol Hill constructive industry representative and SMACNA’s executive director of government and political affairs. Jason Watson is equally involved as SMACNA’s executive director of labor relations.
“We unleashed Stan and Jason into the regulatory space in early 2022 and with our legal support and partners including SMART, they have done an incredible job in this arena,” says Hilger, noting how he first met Kolbe in 1993 while interning at the National Roofing Contractors Association. Kolbe was already at SMACNA.
At Partners in Progress, Aaron Hilger participated in the panel discussion with other industry leaders.
The August 2023 final rule to restore the New Deal Davis-Bacon Act prevailing wage law that had been stripped of its original intent to set minimum labor standards for workers on federal construction job sites “is something I never thought I’d see,” Hilger says.
Indeed, it is a longtime career milestone for Kolbe.
Kolbe told SMACNews last September, “Now, prevailing wage is simpler and enforceable, and those are two things we really like.” The DOL took most of SMACNA’s recommendations and common-sense suggestions to the draft rule into account. “It is beyond a home run,” he said.
Watson added, “By returning to the 30% rule, more union contractors will be able to bid on federal contracts and it will help correct the wage rates on federal work.”
Aaron Hilger with SMACNA Past President Tony Kocurek and Anirban Basu, SMACNA’s Chief Economist.
This legislative win is especially valuable for the industry given the influx of megaprojects.
In terms of safe banking, Hilger says SMACNA supports and sees momentum on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug in states where it is legal. “For member contractors with projects to build and maintain these facilities, they can’t bank the money [because of its current classification],” Hilger says.
“The reclassification would make it easier and safer for our contractors to work on these projects,” Hilger adds.
Today, project fees collected for work on these facilities is basically considered “drug money” because banks insured by the FDIC won’t touch it.
“What we really care about is our members’ abilities to grab a hold of market opportunities and do them in a safe, professional way,” he says.
Related to opportunity, Hilger and SMACNA are also keeping an eye on regulatory movement to support the establishment of safe nuclear power installations as an alternative energy source. Hilger sees project opportunities for members. He says the plants will be necessary for the energy requirements of chip and battery plants that are currently underway or will be built in the future.
SMART aligned in these advocacy efforts, Hilger adds. “This is a great time for us to have a partner that wants to grab on to these opportunities,” he says.
Creating Career Pathways
There are currently 338,000 open positions in the construction trades and about 35,000 unfilled positions in sheet metal specifically, Hilger says. These numbers underscore the importance of recruiting initiatives and exposing people to the industry who might not have considered pursuing a sheet metal career.
Aaron Hilger with SMART General President Mike Coleman
For instance, SMACNA supports Heavy Metal Summer Experience, which started in 2021 as a combined effort by Western Allied Mechanical, Hermanson Company, SMACNA-Western Washington and Construction for Change.
The six-week pilot program operated in two locations with 28 student participants. This year, the 501(c)3 is helping support about 50 camps hosted by SMACNA members across the country with a projected 600 students.
“It’s exciting, it’s fun and it shows us there is a demand and interest in trades careers,” Hilger says.
Another workforce boost is on the horizon if the DOL’s proposed rules to revise the national apprenticeship system pass. SMACNA applauded the DOL’s efforts, touting the benefits of gold-standard, industry-wide, multi-employer Registered Apprenticeship Programs (RAPs).
The modernized apprentice-ship standards will make occu-pational skills and training more portable while enhancing alignment with post-secondary education and providing better performance data. Roles for state apprenticeship agencies and other stakeholders in the system will be more clearly defined with leadership, promotion and other coded standards.
The final rule also promotes apprenticeship pathways, including a student-centric Registered Career and Technical Education Apprenticeship for easier enrollment.
“All of this positive movement translates to long-term employment for young and experienced workers in the industry,” Hilger says.
Evolution with Members in Mind
You can’t talk business in any industry without bringing artificial intelligence (AI) into the conversation. The SMACNA board approved a suggestion to hire an AI consultant, a process that is currently underway.
The initiative is in effort to get on the front end of AI and how it can benefit SMACNA member contractors. “Obviously, construction is largely immune from AI ‘taking our jobs,’ but what I’m excited about is how we might use the technology to plan our workflows better and to help our workers be safer and more productive on the jobsite,” Hilger says.
Aaron Hilger with SMACNA President Carol Duncan.
A technical standard will help guide members on how to best engage in the AI space.
“SMACNA is a strong leading standards-creating body, and we want to prepare and get our information into a playbook that will be useful for members using those tech tools,” Hilger points out.
Supporting members in every way is Hilger’s passion.
“Our membership experience starts at the chapter level, and we are working hard to give chapters the tools to succeed at a high level—and to me, that is a lot of fun,” relates Hilger, noting he rose from the chapter executive ranks.
Circling back to the productive, proactive partnership with SMART, Hilger says the future is promising.
“I’m really excited to see what’s next with the future of SMACNA and SMART working together,” Hilger says. “Mike Coleman and I, as well as our staff, are heavily involved in labor relations, and we see the world in the same way. We see opportunities to expand, and we are excited about grabbing a hold of those and helping our members achieve.”
