A road far less traveled. (Engineering related) (community college, degrees, high school)

[nicet4]

By less traveled I am talking about a road most of you might not even know exists leading to jobs that most can not fathom. Jobs with typical entry level salaries starting between $30 and $50k that end up being close to six figures with five to ten years experience. Jobs that can never be outsourced and every job I have ever heard of comes automatically with a benefits program that always includes health & dental insurance, 401k's and usually bonuses and or profit sharing.

Construction Inspectors

I am not referring to some building inspector that works for a building department. The inspectors I refer to I doubt most of you know exist.

I hear what you are thinking but to top all this off there are lots and lots of jobs available around the country right now that are going begging because there are not enough qualified applicants.

But don't take my word I'll tell you how to do an internet search for "help wanted" to see for yourself. Matter of fact I would encourage you to be very skeptical not believing a word I say verifying everything from a variety of sources.

The problem with this career path is it is chock full of pitfalls and Charlatan for profit schools that will cost a ton of money only to give one a piece of paper that really isn't worth anything. To travel this road you would want to very carefully study the map, get all the information before spending the first dime and independently verify what the school is spewing about themselves. I am afraid that for each school that offers something of value there are twenty that are worse than worthless. To many are there to steal your money.

What makes so many BA's nearly worthless is there's so many of them. A BA in psychology, journalism or sociology is a wonderful thing but there are so many of them I can buy all I want for $12/hr with a single ad producing an endless supply of equally qualified candidates. If you have one of those degrees it has lost much of its value because there are so many of you.

Do an internet search for and you will come across a job like this one.

Job Description
Dewberry is looking for Construction Inspectors of all levels to work out of our Bloomfield, NJ and New York, NY Offices. Candidates must either have NICET Certification, a BS in Civil / Construction Engineering or an EIT with bridge and highway construction inspection experience and 2+ years of experience.

Required Skills
Construction Engineering,NICET I,NICET II,NICET III,NICET IV

Required Experience
Candidates must either have NICET Certification, a BS in Civil / Construction Engineering or an EIT with bridge and highway construction inspection experience and 2+ years of experience.

They don't have a salary range on that but I can assure you that is not some low wage $20/hr job. I am going to guess it's six figures if you got Level IV which requires a few years experience.

Do a Google search on nicet concrete inspector job and nicet highway inspector job see what comes up in the job market.

I know the ad says "BS in Civil / Construction Engineering.... " but but that isn't the important part. The two terms you are going to repeatedly run into are NICET and ACI certification.

All I have is a high school diploma with one semester of college but I do have a NICET IV certification. Given the job requirements if I went head to head with someone having a BS in Civil Engineering without NICET I would be the one to get the job. Couple the NICET with ACI certification and I would guarantee I would get the job.

As you do the Google search counting the jobs, for nicet highway inspector job I got 12,600 hits, there's only about 5,000 people in the US that have any level of certification with less than 1,200 having Level IV.

If your company needs one (working on highways they will) and you put an ad in the paper expecting a line of applicants to show up you'll be greatly disappointed. You will be lucky to get two.

Even now companies are poaching from other companies to fill slots.

Every time you pass some highway construction and see some earth being compacted, steel laid, concrete being poured or a bridge being built somewhere around there lurking about is a NICET certified inspector with an ACI certificate.

Getting there, getting the certificates, is the problem. There's no road. Maybe there is one but I've looked for courses offered by a community college and can't find a single one anywhere. Oh sure, you can find courses on construction inspection but the two key words you must find are NICET and ACI because without those the course (ITT Institute) are all but worthless. Sad, people think they are getting something when they are getting crap.

I did some searching this evening and I ran across one "school" that seems to have it but before this evening I never heard of them so please do not take this as any sort of endorsement.

Course Information (http://www.wilrick.com/list.htm - broken link)

Are they for profit? I dunno for sure but I think they might be because the people they need to hire to teach the course aren't going to come cheap. Why take a job at a community college for $35k when you can easily get one earning 3 times that amount? All I looked for was the magic words.

The magical words NICET, ACI and AWS/CWI are all there and if you know someone that might be interested those are the terms to look for. Without those the course is garbage.

The only reason I wrote this was thinking someone might be interested in exploring a less traveled road. At least now you know it's there.

[AuburnAL]

That's all well and good, but after reading your post I've still no clue how to become NICET or ACI certified. There may not be some clear cut path as there is to become say a PE, but surely you remember how you got to NICET IV.

[nicet4]

Originally Posted by AuburnAL

That's all well and good, but after reading your post I've still no clue how to become NICET or ACI certified. There may not be some clear cut path as there is to become say a PE, but surely you remember how you got to NICET IV.

That's the problem, I am at the point of thinking that portion of the road is overgrown with weeds.

I had a friend that owned a company who hired me as a trainee for not much more than minimum wage and I didn't really start earning until I was there for several years.

But looking back 35 years that minimum wage job was the best job I could have taken. In the beginning all of my friends were earning more than I was but in 5 years I passed nearly all of them in earnings.

Today I view the first few years as not being taken advantage of, I wasn't, but getting paid to get an education. I was getting paid a salary a bit above minimum wage but "working" 50 hours a week getting paid for 40 but 20 of those hours I spent learning. In my mind it wasn't fair for me to have someone pay me to learn. I recognized I needed to earn at least enough to pay my wages and benefits. Looking back I got treated very well but I put in a lot of effort too.

In today's environment you'd probably get sneered at and reported for offering the same setup.

I doubt anyone today would view what I did as an opportunity. Why work for $8.50 when you can earn $10.00 stocking shelves at Costco?

So I am looking for schools with very specific courses and not finding any to speak of. So far I found the one I listed but that's about it.

If it was easy lots more would be doing it causing my wages to fall while I suffered the stress of not having the job security I currently enjoy.

[Smooth23]

Yeah, they're looking for a civil engineer with 2+ years experience. That's a realistic approach for anyone, right? With that much experience I think anyone would be expecting close to 6 figures.

[unggio]

how are the entrepreneurship opportunities in this field (highway construction inspector, NICET) in california as opposed to being an FPE?

[Dragonmam]

http://www.nicet.org/become-certifie...tified/http://