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Career Planning

New program builds renovation and business skills

Television has made heroes -- and occasionally villains -- out of home renovators, whether they're fixing up the kitchen of a suburban semi or gutting the interior of a Victorian mansion.

DAVID CHILTON -- Special to the Toronto Sun

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3-YEAR PROGRAM

In fact, demand for the renovator's skills is so high that George Brown College intends to launch a three-year program next January (providing provincial government approval is forthcoming)

John Wills, director of the schools of Construction Management and Trades and Architectural Studies at George Brown, says the Building Renovation Technology program will offer students significant business skills instruction.

High on the agenda will be courses on the building code and construction safety, as well as other subjects such as property development, law, client relations, the environment and construction economics. Wills says this last topic is worthy of special mention. "Most young entrepreneurs are out of the (renovations) business in two to four years because of their (lack) of business skills," he says.

To be accepted into Building Renovation Technology next January, students must have a high school diploma, including Grade 11 math and Grade 12 English. Mature students, those aged 19 or older, can also apply to the program, but they must pass a math and English test administered by George Brown.

Wills expects most applicants will be male, since nine out of 10 enrollees in the college's entire portfolio of technology programs are male -- although there's more and more interest coming from young women.

Students must spend two or three days a week in their final year completing a job placement requirement. Also, at some point between the third and fourth semesters of their second year, they'll also have to spend a week working on an actual renovation.

George Brown student Matt Fellows should be sufficiently experienced by then to ace the on-the-job portion of the program. That's because Fellows, 21, has already started work on a renovation near Yorkdale Mall following his graduation from George Brown's two-year Building Technician Program. The college will continue to offer the 24-month program along side its new three-year initiative, Wills says. Courses in both streams will be common to everyone for the first two years of their studies.

FUTURE PLANS

Fellows went straight to George Brown from high school, and says he wants to start his own firm in a few years, but he is aware of how some young renovators who flourish with saw and drill can wither with dollars and cents.

For that reason he's signed up to take the third year of the new Building Renovation Technology program. Wills explains that, uniquely, Fellows and other graduates of the two-year program will be allowed to start that third year this September, rather than having to wait until next January along with everyone else.

Job prospects for newbie renovators could hardly be better, even if George Brown's own survey's show construction activity may decline. "There's still a huge demand for these kinds of skills," Wills says. "The range of employers is huge."