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a.k.a. NAHETS  This is a review of the Nevada School of Construction, and my education there as a heavy equipment operator from January to February of 2008. Such a review will also double as an account of my experience and skills acquired for any potential employers perusing my website. At the end of 2007, I was fed up with jobs in the service and hospitality industries. In sales, serving, or various other forms of customer service, I was good at what I did, and took pride in my efforts and accomplishments (when I was allowed the freedom to get the job done), but the work usually felt empty and unproductive. Selling products I didn’t believe in, or working under crushing bureaucratic and/or poorly managed conditions made the end-results seem meaningless. While slugging along, I began to consider other lines of work. Something that would actually produce something tangible. Thinking back to my early twenties, I remembered when I did some work as a carpenter and dabbled in landscaping, and focused on getting back into the field of creating. Construction. After looking into various aspects of the Construction field, I took a suggestion from my wife to check out “certain jobs that, after going to school, can make more money driving trucks or equipment”. After a bit of research, I discovered the profession of heavy equipment operating. One day not much later, I saw a small advertisement in the Las Vegas Review-Journal for the Nevada School of Construction. I called, received some information, and set to more research. The heavy equipment operating classes were set into four different levels—the first three being subsequent levels for typical heavy equipment, the fourth specifically for crane. The prices seemed astounding, but I studied on:
Each class was three weeks of full-time attendance, each 114 hours. The three HEO classes had to be taken in order, and the prices stacked up. So, to take all three HEO classes took nine weeks and cost $15,095. To take all four classes (some guys did) cost a whopping $20,390. School loans were set up with Sallie Mae, and people came from all over the country to attend the school. Those who traveled to Vegas included the cost of their accommodations and living expenses in their loan. When I called to receive the information, the school’s recruiter set up a date with me to tour the facility. The day I went out there, I found the school in North Las Vegas (address and contact information down below), and was satisfied with the basic and practical layout. There were two classrooms (in a large, concrete garage setting), a computer lab, administration, and a job placement assistance office. After being shown around, I was given a map to “the pit”, where the equipment was kept and the field education took place. I found it a couple of miles away on the northeast edge of Las Vegas, but didn’t look around much, because I couldn’t go past the parking lot without PPE and supervision. So I researched everything I could about the school. The price was high, so I had to make sure it was a worthy value, and training I could actually market and use. In Las Vegas, there are schools for practically anything you’re wanting to learn and pay for—whether you can use your education or not. On the internet, I found little. NSC had a few promotional videos on YouTube, and a few references to an association called “NAHETS” (National Association of Heavy Equipment Training Schools). After looking around on NAHETS, it became clear that NAHETS (who supported HEO schools in Georgia, Oklahoma, Nevada, and California) and the Nevada School of Construction were both owned by Matt Klabacka. It was also affiliated with Yellow Metal USA and Yellow Metal TV, internet resources for heavy equipment operators. NCCER (National Center for Construction Education and Research) also supported the school’s programs. So little information on the internet (no real reviews, etc.), other than its own cross-promotional material, made me a little uneasy about the school, so I called a few local contractors. That’s what did it for me. They all recognized the school, and gave it good reviews. One contractor, Dominic of Western Contractors (who was advertising in the classifieds, looking for entry-level backhoe operators), told me that NSC “trains operators”, and that employers looking for workers considered the training to be equivalent of 3-5 years of on-the-job training. Before returning to the school to sign up, I decided to just go through level one. Dominic told me that the backhoe was the most important machine to learn, because most of everything else operates similarly. For a while, I really considered taking level two as well, because I was really interested in learning the dozer, but ultimately, I decided it wasn’t worth the $5000. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t. During my first real job, I learned the roller and the dozer on my own with actual experience. I may have missed out on the book-work and theory about that cat, but I’m still perfectly capable of operating the machine. Setting up the loan went easily (7% interest), but I was later surprised by a sort of “finance charge” of around $150. Not from the school—from Sally Mae. On the first day of school, the whole class met in the classroom for orientation and finalizing whatever paperwork some of the guys needed to complete. We were each allotted a couple of books to keep (a Yellow Metal workbook and a spiral-bound printed book of administrative stuff and various reference), and a couple of loaner books (the class materials). We were also given some gloves, glasses, safety vests, hard hats, pencils, and other miscellaneous stuff we’d need. During the first half of the day we were introduced to all the staff members, told all the rules and regulations, filed out our student folders, etc. During the second half of the day, we all went down to the pit, where we took pictures, met the field instructor, were briefed on the rules of field-education, and were split into two groups. I ended up in the group that would spend the first half of the day in the pit, then the second half in the classroom. The instructors I dealt with on a daily basis were Joe Rosas, the classroom instructor, and Blake (I don’t remember his last name, and he’s no longer on the website), the field instructor. Both of them were great instructors. Both very knowledgeable. Joe was good in the classroom, and whenever he’d get off track of whatever we were talking about, he’d start pouring out all sorts of good advice for when we were out in the world. Blake was great with the machines, and a very confident instructor, also full of information. The other students came in from all over the country. Only one other person in the class was from Las Vegas, like I was. Most of those guys went on to take the other levels’ classes, many of them taking all four. On the second day, and for the rest of the time in school, I reported to the field for 0545, in the dark and frozen to my motorcycle. We set up a rotation schedule, where we each had a number and rotated through the machines, usually an hour, or an hour and a half each session. In the beginning, we had a CAT 216 Skid Steer, a CASE 570MXT Tractor, a Freightliner Business Class M2 Dump Truck, a CAT 928G Loader, a 2-wheel-drive CAT 420D Backhoe, a 4-wheel-drive CAT 420D Backhoe, and a Volvo BL60 Backhoe. That was seven pieces of equipment for eight students. The eighth rotation (one student always without a piece of equipment) was a field supervisory position, where the student followed Blake around and learned about grade-checking/setting, blueprints, and various other ground details. Some time in the second week, the school returned the Volvo backhoe, so we then had two field supervisory rotations. Every morning, we learned about and tended to the daily preventive maintenance, checks, and greasing of our rotation-assigned equipment. In the beginning, out at the field, we did some pretty basic stuff. On the backhoes, we started out with ghost-passes and straight trenches. With the skid steer, we leveled out areas and made stockpiles. On the loader, we stockpiled, made berms, moved junk dirt and boulders around, or dumped them off of a cliff. With the tractor, we drove around, leveling the entire pit floor with the gannon-box. And on the dump truck, we maneuvered around cones forwards and backwards until we were comfortable with its large size. After lunch and a short distance traveled to the main building of the school, we had classroom time in the afternoons. There, every night we had the homework of reading the materials for the next day’s class, and every day we had 2-4 tests. We reviewed homework and course materials, watched videos, and had lots of hands-on work (such as when we learned about stakes and grade-checking). A lot of classroom work was pretty basic for me (mathematics, tool stuff (required for NCCER certification), communication and employability), but I expected that for level one. Here were the courses:
We also learned an overall orientation to the trade, how to lay out projects, grade checking/setting, reading stakes, some traffic safety/control, slope/ratio mathematics, and anything else Joe felt like teaching about the job. At one point, the Job Placement director, Veronica Fernandez, spoke to the class about finding and holding jobs, tips for interviews, took some surveys from us about what sort of work we were interested in, and said that by graduation, she would have a detailed package of information and job leads for each of us. She made it very clear that they were not a job placement office, but a job placement assistance office. Another time, some representatives from a prominent mining company, Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold (previously Phelps-Dodge?) came to speak to the class and offered information to set up job interviews with anyone who was willing to work and relocate to their mines. (Note: their job security and benefits were fantastic, but their pay capped off at around $24/hour, no matter how long you’ve been there.) As time went on in the class, we moved up to more difficult projects in the pit. We were now doing more complicated trenches (and from different positions) in the backhoes, loading trucks with the loader, and dumping the truck in various places and levels. In the middle of the pit, all pieces of equipment were involved in the setup (blueprints, benchmarks, staking, etc.) and building of a house pad. Loading, backfilling, and grading with the skid steer and loader; grading and making slopes with the tractor; checking grade and painting/directing cuts and fills. When the pad was finished, the skid steer was used to cut out and grade a sub-level. In the end, we tore down the pad with the backhoes. In one of the last days of classroom instruction, we all learned a First Aid / CPR course. It was the third time I’ve taken such a course in five or so years, so it was nothing new to me, but it was still fun. On graduation day, we all started together down in the pit, where we were each able to get any more time we wanted on the machines, and we participated in “backhoe events”. Event 1 was the egg. With the backhoe, we each had three minutes to gently pick up an egg in the teeth, lift it up, carry it across two feet or so, and lower it down into an egg carton. Without breakage, of course. Event 2 comprised of using the other backhoe to stack up a column of six tires, one by one. I spent some extra time on the skid steer, and the loader (to get more accustomed to that articulated steering). At lunch time, we headed back to the main building and had a big barbeque to go with the presentation of certificates, awards, and gifts.
During graduation, along with everything else I received, Veronica gave me the job placement assistance packet. It was basically a spreadsheet of Las Vegas heavy equipment contractors, their contact information, and the occasional hiring manager’s name and/or fax number. She helped me by scanning my certificates (here on my website now), and told me about how crummy the job scene was at the time in Vegas. After graduation, after saying goodbye to the instructors and everyone signing everyone else’s hard hats, some guys went back to Idaho or New York, some guys went back to the hotel for the weekend, looking forward to Level 2, and I went home to find a job. Overall Impression:I really enjoyed my brief time at the school, but it was very brief. The instruction was excellent, and the format of the classes and everything involving the educational aspect was wonderful. However, despite the intensity of the training, it was too short for maximum retention. If we spent more time in the machines, I might have remembered more. For instance, when I finally did get a job, even though it’s like riding a bicycle, I found myself a little rusty on the operations, and I’d mostly forgotten other things like detents and automatic shifting. But, the lack of retention mostly showed up in less machine-oriented things, such as interpreting stakes (which I had to figure out again) and checking grades. I haven’t had to use the laser and check grades at the Pikes Peak job, but I know if I had to I’d have to spend a few seconds remembering and figuring out the formulas again. Despite all I learned, once I got on a real job, it was painfully obvious that I was green. Again, maybe a little more time could have helped this. My biggest disappointments were two things: the job placement assistance, and the price. The price was too high. Way too high. When I signed on, all throughout the class, and still looking back on it (when I pay my monthly payments), I knew it was a compromise. No three week course could really be worth $6095. That’s about $400 a day. While the class was excellent and worth learning (as opposed to starting as a laborer and being lucky enough to move up and learn on the job), it still cost maybe double what it should have. I know I’d get ribbed about it if any guys I worked with knew how much I paid to learn what they learned as kids on the farm or at some random time on the job. The job placement assistance was a bit of a let-down. While Veronica made it clear that her job was to “assist” us, because getting the job is ultimately up to us individuals, there still could have been more. The school tied in to Yellow Metal USA, which was a place where employers could specifically post jobs looking for operators, but most Vegas jobs on Yellow Metal I called about had put their ads there by accident, thinking the website was something else. The amount of employers there was also rather limited, and didn’t have anything in certain areas of the country that were not affiliated with NAHETS (like Colorado). The interview, resume, and work ethic coaching she gave us was nothing I didn’t already know, which is fine, I suppose. But the packet of data she gave me was outdated and small, especially when I made my own spreadsheet during my initial job search (with 200+ companies in Vegas, hiring manager names, fax numbers, and other contact info). Later, when Vegas had no jobs and I decided to move to Colorado Springs, I asked her if she had any leads for Colorado, and she did a monster/indeed search and sent back the six results. I could have done the same as fast as she did (and did). So, I guess I paid for the job placement assistance, and didn’t get a thing out of it. You’d think that the school could make contacts with various large companies across the country and set up some sort of referral program, like make other colleges and trade schools do. But, overall, if you can afford the lofty price and already know how to get a job on your own, it’s a great school, and the knowledge and machine time is worth it alone. Almost. For several months after graduation, I tried and tried to find a job in Vegas. Apparently, I had really bad timing on my idea to get into heavy equipment operating, and the city was in a major housing, mortgage, and building recession. People were losing their homes, and with so many homes vacant, there was just no construction. I called over 200 companies. Sent resumes. Followed up. Visited the offices. Even made this website. Sent emails. Mailed direct mailers marketing my skills and availability. But everywhere I looked, I heard the same phrases: There was no work. Lots of their workers were on the bench. They were waiting for the banks to sign this deal, or that deal, and nothing was going through. Companies were having to return their equipment. Contractors were going out of business. When I decided to try Colorado Springs, I put some feelers out in the city and got a job immediately. I started working up on Pikes Peak, restoring Colorado’s famous highway the very day after I moved to the Springs. Click here to continue on and read about my experience working for Frontier Environmental Services!Here are some pictures (and their descriptions) below: These are some of the machines I logged time on in my training:(Click on the pictures for a closer look)All of these machines were used in very versatile ways throughout the various training projects, which included staking out and creating a fully-finished building pad. On every piece of equipment shown here, I have experience in daily preventive maintenance and lubrication.
 Contact information for the Nevada School of ConstructionNevada School of Construction4405 E. Colton Ave Suite 106 Las Vegas, NV 89115 Direct: 702-644-2509 Toll-Free: 1-888-504-5215 Admission Hotline: 1-888-504-5214 Placement Assistance Hotline: 1-888-504-5213 Check out my Links page for their internet link. ...Click here to go back to my WORK EXPERIENCE!
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Website last update 09/13/09