The Military-Style Trade School Changing the Workforce Game

About this episode

Rob Holmes discusses ForgeNow, a military-style trade school addressing the skilled trades shortage in America.

Rob Holmes co-founded ForgeNow to solve America's skilled trades shortage — producing apprentice-level HVAC, electrical, and plumbing technicians in just 6 weeks. The average plumber in Texas is 54 years old. The average electrician is 60. Within 10 years, 50% of today's tradespeople will be on social security. And nobody's talking about it. Rob Holmes is. His answer is ForgeNow — a military-style trades training school in Dallas that runs a full-time, hands-on program Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and graduates technicians ready to work at apprentice level in six weeks. Starting wage: $25 an hour. Graduation rate: 91% — versus 23% at community colleges. Rob is the Co-Founder and President of ForgeNow. A West Point graduate and Army veteran, he built ForgeNow on one simple principle borrowed from the military: train how you fight. Over 1,700 graduates have been placed with 250+ employers across 39 states. ForgeNow is a Department of Defense SkillBridge partner and GI Bill-eligible program — and it's now developing specialized electrical training pipelines for the data center boom happening across Texas. If you know a young person stuck in the gig economy…

People in this episode

Host: Andrew Brown

Guest: Rob Holmes

Topics covered

• skilled trades
• workforce development
• trade education
• apprenticeship programs
• military training
• employment opportunities

Keywords

• skilled trades
• HVAC
• plumbing
• electrical
• apprenticeship
• trade school
• workforce
• GI Bill
• employment

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: ForgeNow, Department of Defense

Places: Texas, Dallas

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