Built In Boots
At The DDS Companies, we don’t just build projects—we build careers. From field workers to office staff, every role contributes to our mission of excellence in the civil engineering and utility construction industry. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to take the next step in your journey, DDS offers the opportunities, support, and culture you need to thrive.
Ready to join a team where your skills and dedication are valued? Visit our Careers Page at www.ddscompanies.com/careers to explore current opportunities and take the first step toward building your future with DDS. Your journey starts here!
Built In Boots
EP 19 — Building the Next Generation of the Trades
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In this episode of Built In Boots, Mark Payne sits down with Broome-Tioga BOCES heavy equipment students Michael Roma, Jonah Saunders, and Josh Coleman following their first-place finish at the New York State SkillsUSA competition.
The students share how they found their way into the trades, the safety-focused projects that helped take them to the top at SkillsUSA, and what they’ve learned through hands-on education. They also discuss preparing for the national competition, their career goals, and how programs like BOCES are helping prepare the next generation for careers in construction and the skilled trades
At The DDS Companies, we don’t just build projects—we build careers. From field workers to office staff, every role contributes to our mission of excellence in the civil construction industry. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to take the next step in your journey, DDS offers the opportunities, support, and culture you need to thrive.
Ready to join a team where your skills and dedication are valued? Visit our Careers Page at www.ddscompanies.com/careers to explore current opportunities and take the first step toward building your future with DDS. Your journey starts here!
Welcome to Built in Boot, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes at the DDS Company, where we're laying the foundation for tomorrow's infrastructure. In each episode, we bring you the real stories from the people who make it all happen, honoring everyone from the field to the front office. Join us as we explore their journey, uncover the lessons they've learned, and show you how to build a rewarding career in the double construction industry. If you're ready to learn from those who've built their success from the ground up, you're in the right place. Let's get started.
SPEAKER_01In today's episode, we're joined by students from Broom Tyoga Bose's. These students are fresh off a win from New York State High School Skills USA competition. They competed in the occupational safety and health category. Take a listen, see how they did it, see uh where they're heading next, and uh check out their ambitions for their futures. I think these guys have a uh have a bright future in the construction industry, and I'm excited to share that with you. Stay tuned. How about this? How about we start out with you guys introducing yourselves, kind of talk through how you know what led you into the class and stuff like that. So we'll we'll start. Who wants to start? Which one of you wants to start?
SPEAKER_02I guess I'll go for it. You got it, Roma.
SPEAKER_01You got this.
SPEAKER_02So oh wait, do I gotta introduce myself first? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Introduce yourself. Sure. Uh my name is Michael Roma. I'm uh senior at Johnson City. Uh I do heavy equipment at Bose's. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to do something hands-on after school. What really led me to the heavy equipment class was me and uh Joan and I were on the trip together. And we were kind of talking about it, and we both decided that we were gonna go into the same class on the bus ride back to our home school, and that's what kind of led me to the class. Okay. It seemed like a fun class, very hands-on. Right? Not too many tests.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, was that the goal not to have too many tests?
SPEAKER_02Always.
SPEAKER_01Okay. I can respect that.
SPEAKER_03Alright, who's next? I'm Jonah Saunders. I also go to JC. Um I always knew I wanted to get into a trade. I've always done hands-on work for neighbors and family members since I was a kid. I felt like the heavy equipment class had the most to offer for what I wanted to do after high school. Okay. I feel like you can go a lot of different directions with this. And I knew it was gonna be a hard class to get into, so I wanted to make my decision pretty fast. And I was able to get lucky enough to be one of the ones in the class, and I don't regret it one bit. So is it is it hard to get into that class? There's a pretty big waiting list. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um every year, every year they have waiting lists.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. There's been a couple kids the first year drop out and a couple new ones come in. Okay. But it's you learn a lot. You learn both the repair and the operation side. And I just think it's a great opportunity. Cool. Alright. Thank that leaves you.
SPEAKER_04I'm Josh Coleman. Uh I am go to Festal. I'm a junior, not a senior. I was lucky enough to have my dad run the hero class, so I've been exposed to it for most of my life, the past 11 years. So but five years before that, he was a carpentry, I believe, building trades. I was exposed to it for a while. Always knew that I liked working with my hands, helped him out. We used to live at a camp, help him with all the maintenance stuff, and it's always been a trade, and just so happened that that class appealed to what I want to do. Like the hands-on part, enjoy doing it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, ton of fun. Alright, so everybody's everybody kind of likes the heavy equipment side of it, and that's cool. What brings you guys here today? What brings you three individuals out of this huge class? What brings you guys together? You two are in it last year.
SPEAKER_03Well, so last year, me and Michael we did the same competition. It was something we were able to do as a team. We you get to see a different side of the trade. Not everybody looks at it as a s as the safety standpoint. It's just a different experience. And Skills USA, it really opens your eyes to what things can do and what goes on in the real world before you get there. Um last year we did not do as well as we did this year. So this year was kind of our opportunity to do more research, more work, and clear up the presentation a little bit, too. Really show what we know and just gather as much information as we can to show other students and teachers why this is important.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So a lot of the guys that uh that may be listening and things like that, they may be familiar with the heavy equipment side of the competition because you know, as DDS, we've been doing that for a few years now. And I I've had guys come to me from across the state that work for us that have talked to us about it. Explain a little bit, kind of describe the competition that you guys are involved with.
SPEAKER_04So the contest that we're in is not trade specific. Ours is a single group. So we need to all we have to have a team of three from a single class. We're all from heavy equipment repair and operation. But we had to throughout the year collect and do four projects, which we had workplace inspections, dress your trade, job site roles, and hero yoga. So we had to do those. Uh we visited job sites first, or we visited workplaces first, got got the general ideas for all the projects from those workplaces, and talking to the companies that we did. We talked to Milton Cat and DOT, which those were really cool experiences. We got a lot of good knowledge from them. But we got from Milton Cat, we got the Hero Yoga, which is just we implemented stretching before we actually went out to the work site and did work to help hopefully increase the longevity of uh our student of the students in our class outside of after they leave high school pretty much.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04But then we also, from a combination of the two, we decided maybe some stricter rules on our job site would do as well. So we came up with seven rules for our uh job site generally. Help increase safety there. And then we did dress your trade, which was an original idea we had that uh helped with getting all the kids in our school, not just specific to our class, more look like looking professional and having the correct uh safety equipment on.
SPEAKER_01Okay, that's really cool. Go from that, let's talk a little bit about the competitions that you've been involved with and what what goes from what you've learned and what you do, what trans or what actually transfers into the competition. You want to talk about it, Roman?
SPEAKER_02So we had to do a presentation for ours. Okay. We took our four projects and we put them into a presentation. Which our four projects, it was uh dress your trade, hero yoga, workplace inspections, and then uh job site rules. All right. Once we had those, we put them into a presentation, and then we had to present in front of a set of judges. Okay. And we also had to have like a booklet that had our presentation in it, and then just some other information about our projects.
SPEAKER_04Sorry to cut you off, but the presentation is more of a general overview over everything we did. The book is I think our book was 40 pages at states. It's way more like specific information, like minutes for meetings, all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_01Okay. All right. So was states like the only competition, or did you have to work up to that? There wasn't a there's no regionals for us in regionals.
SPEAKER_04We go straight to states. States and then the next level is nationals, which we were lucky enough to win states, so we're off to natural nationals beginning of June.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. Congratulations, number one. How many how many other teams did you have to work through? We competed against four other teams of three. Four other teams of three? Okay.
SPEAKER_04And were they specific to heavy equipment or no, they were general uh just needed to be three kids from the same class from any of the other so same trade. So we were heavy equipment. I don't actually know for sure what any of the other teams were in.
SPEAKER_01Okay. That's fair. You you've gone through, you've won states, now you're on your way to nationals. What is going through your head about going to nationals? And it's okay to say that you're nervous. That that's 100% understandable.
SPEAKER_03It's definitely nerve-wracking, but at the same time, it's nice to be able to at the end of our presentation for states, we had goals that we wanted to implement, and it's nice to be able to see that we can implement those goals into other classes and show a result of that at the national competition. Yeah, no, I think that's uh that's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_02What do you think? Obviously, it's nerve-wracking going to nationals, it's a lot bigger of a competition. Right. Because it's everybody in the country. Right. But I feel like I feel like we'll do good. I feel like we'll as long as we stick to what we know and have a good presentation, I feel like we'll do good.
SPEAKER_04When you polish up a couple things, the main thing we got that's different is we finally have a rubric for grading for our uh contest. So we are going through that, checking all the boxes, making sure that everything's up to snuff, at least in our opinion.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Okay. Well, good deal. We've we've gone through, we've talked a little bit about the trade, we talked a little bit about you know the things that you've implemented and things like that. How well did everybody receive Hero Yoga? I'm curious about that.
SPEAKER_04It was not not widely loved, to put it like that. Quite a few well, it's what you expect. Tell a bunch of teenage boys we're gonna do yoga this morning when they came here to operate equipment. Probably didn't really go all that well, did it? We got about it. They they did it. We stretched, we got it going continuously. Everyone did everyone enjoyed it eventually. Everyone came around, but that one in particular.
SPEAKER_01A lot of companies do that, and even some of our customers do that. And they will actually have our guys doing it with them, you know, on their job site kickoffs and things like that, and their daily toolbox talks, and it actually does help.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01The numbers don't lie. So I was just in Atlanta at the uh headquarters, and we uh we were actually talking a lot about that, and the decrease in injuries is huge. Yeah. And the dollar signs that go along with that, I probably say this wrong because I talk about the decrease in injuries, I talk about the dollar signs, but really what I should be talking about is quality of life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right? Because the people that are participating in this, they're not getting hurt, they're able to go home, pick up their little kids, go out and play ball or do whatever else they're doing, you know, enjoy their weekend and their time with their families, and they're not in pain. Like that's that's a big part of this. And frankly, our trade is not very good to our bodies. No, but you know, you can only run a dozer for so long without messing up your back or your neck or whatever.
SPEAKER_04Not a not a cushy office job.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, certainly not a cushy office job. And all joking aside, I drive a three-quarter ton RAM and I I put on a lot of miles every week. And then there's a lot of times when I get out of that thing, or even when I take a break going across the state or whatever, where I'm out there and I probably look like a goon, but I'm I'm out there stretching because I've got to get things loosened back up and get moving again.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01It's important. It is 100%. Okay, so you're excited to go to the competition. Just kind of dialing back in on Skills USA. Talk to me a little bit about what that organization actually has done for you, what what you think of that. I'm gonna throw this at all three of you, so whoever comes up with an idea first, you know, you're you're more than welcome to jump in.
SPEAKER_04It's big for like it builds a lot of skills for many people on how to like communicate effectively. You'd be surprised how many kids are in skills their first year who are terrified to speak in front of a group bigger than three people they don't know me, like they don't immediately know. Right. And they're like scared to put their ideas out. But it's I was lucky enough to go to their fault leadership conference, which was a ton of fun. Okay. God's sake halfway through, but it was a ton of fun while I was there. It was very different though. A lot of uh have to share your ideas in front of a group of people you don't know, don't know where they're from, don't know what their backgrounds are, but you have to learn how to share ideas, communicate properly, and work as a team.
SPEAKER_02Alright, cool. What do you think, bud? I feel like it teaches a lot of professional like how to be more professional, especially for our competition. There's really no leeway.
SPEAKER_04If you checked your phone and got caught, you were disqualified.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you couldn't have any electronics. You had to have be you had to be in your it was pretty much a it was a suit jacket with dress pants and a tie. Okay. You had to be in that for we were pretty much in it the whole time for our competition.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Alright. So it it it's it's kind of polishing some of your professional skills ahead of time. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_03What do you think? I think overall it's a great learning experience. No matter what competition you're in, you're there competing all day, and even if you in the end you don't win or you don't do as good as you want, there's always the opportunity to learn something new, do it a different way, something that you weren't aware of before that you can take away from that and implement it once you leave.
SPEAKER_01Okay. That's really cool. Skills has been uh part of my life since I was a junior in high school. And uh that's a lot of years that I don't really care to count up. But uh as a junior, I went and I uh I actually watched the competition and got ready for my senior year. And senior year I competed in the heavy equipment operations competition. I think I ended up with like third or fourth. But I the memories of the competition probably hung with me a lot longer than the place or anything like that. Um shortly after high school, once I graduated, my Bosey's instructor called me up and said, Hey, I need help with Skills USA. Can you come and help us reset the course? So I did that for a few years. Then it was, hey, we're having a regional competition, can you come judge? So I did that for a few more years. Then um we started running the regional at Alfred State. So I was part of that. From there, it went to states, and we would go up and we would assist with judging there. Then from that, it carried forward to uh coming here and getting the opportunity to run the statewide competition. So it's something that you have a chance if you want to give back, that you're able to give back later on, too. And I would 100% recommend that. It's been uh been a pretty rewarding experience so far for me. So so far today, you've came in, you've you've toured our Rochester office, we took you up to training, you met with one of our safety professionals, you've been kind of going around with Nick and stuff like that. What has surprised you about your visit here? The amount of qualifications.
SPEAKER_02Like, I didn't think I knew that there was a lot, but I didn't know that it went that in depth, right?
SPEAKER_03Probably the organization, like it takes a different level of organization to keep track of everything that you guys do, and it's pretty impressive. Okay.
SPEAKER_04It yeah, the pr the organization is crazy. Your amount of spreadsheets you guys have managed perfectly and all of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right now we're doing a lot of spreadsheet heavy stuff. What Macy didn't share with you was that we're actually developing our own software.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_01So we're gonna have our own tracking system with a partner that uh that we've been working with from out in um Wisconsin, Michigan area. And these guys have been great to us. They uh they've attended a lot of the industry events, they came down, they've integrated with us, they've taken some of the qualifications, the operator qualifications, software guys that have sat through operator qualification classes and been successful, like tested out, got OQs so that they can come back and go visit the crews and actually see what the crews are doing every day. To know what they're helping with, to actually know what's going on on the job site. That's a partnership right there. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, the amount of spreadsheets and tracking and everything else, it's a lot. It really is. A lot of folks have no idea about how qualified those guys are. Those guys are going out, they are touching gas pipe that's running to everybody's house. So the amount of work that we do to qualify them is is huge. And the the gas companies appreciate the approach. There's a lot to report out to the customers. Let's let's shift gears. So we talk about the competition, we've talked about going to going to nationals and everything else. We talked a little bit about your visit today. What's the future look like? That's a real question. What do you want to do? What do you think you want to do?
SPEAKER_03I'm going I'm going to Alford State for their heavy equipment operations program. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's pretty good. That's cool. From day one at Bose's, I pretty much knew this is what I wanted to do for a career. Good deal. And I was lucky enough to find their um program. I went and toured, and that was the place I knew I wanted to go to continue my education with this, and then later get into a job in this trade.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. After spending 14 years there, I can confirm that it's a it's a pretty good place. Definitely recommend. What do you think?
SPEAKER_02I'm not really sure yet. There's a lot of business in my family. Okay. Maybe hopefully one day own a business. Home construction's also seemed pretty fun to me. Seems like a good job. But ideally, one day own a business. Okay.
SPEAKER_04How about you? I really want to go into operations for like five, maybe ten years, but then eventually I want to move more into a like safety role, like what the contest was and what you guys do here.
SPEAKER_01Cool. Very cool. There's uh there's a lot of call for that. It's it's tough finding people that have the qualifications and the mindset and the ability to work with folks. Those that whole mix is what makes somebody successful in that. Anything else you guys want to add? And I'm just gonna throw this out there, not because your instructor's sitting here. But I am gonna throw this out there. How beneficial do you think the the the actual trades program in high school has been?
SPEAKER_03I think it's extremely beneficial. It's it's an opportunity for students to be in a setting other than your typical classroom. They're able to learn new skills that they might not have before and see what a job like this in the trades can be like. It's just an it's an awesome opportunity that kids can have and really show them what things are like and not everything's your typical classroom.
SPEAKER_02I feel like it's it's very beneficial for kids that don't some kids might not learn the best in just a typical classroom sitting down for seven to eight hours a day. Right. Just sitting there with a teacher. I feel like it and it's if a kid really knows that's what they want to do, then it's wicked beneficial for them.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04It's insanely beneficial. I don't know. It uh like it gives you so much exposure if you're at the top of the class, gives you a lot of exposure to possible employment. Like even going into your senior year, you have the potential options to be working during the school day instead of going to Bose's. But even if you don't get that, you're still you're still and even if you're not at the top of the class, you're still having that extra piece of certification or qualification. If you want to go into the trade after high school, it Looks good on your resume and it puts you above a kid who just ran like who just came out of high school with regular degree and was just like, hmm, I want to try this. It just shows that you have at least some level of knowledge and experience.
SPEAKER_01There you go. And this is to all three of you. Do you think that by having having gone to BOSIS that when you step out there, do you feel like you're not going to be as lost when you when you start on a job site? Yeah. I would say so.
SPEAKER_04You still won't know everything, and it's very important that all of the students that going through there can still recognize they have stuff to learn still. You don't we don't know everything coming out of that class. Right. As much as they teach us, there's so much to learn.
SPEAKER_01100%. When you're in the class, and and I want to make sure that that we talk about this a little bit. I'm I'm gonna say something that I know is a false statement, and I want you guys to jump in and correct me. The the thought process is, you know, we were joking about you know the the whole idea of the training guys sitting around with their feet up. The thought process is that, well, hey, I'm signing up for a heavy equipment operations class. That means all I'm gonna do is operate equipment.
SPEAKER_04No, no, not even close. We'll spend like half an hour, 45 minutes each morning working on bookwork, and only half the time that you're in the class you're actually in their operations, in the operations half of it, the other half the time you're in the shop. And again, you're not just in the shop, you have half an hour, 45 minutes of bookwork every single morning.
SPEAKER_02Okay. That that doesn't count for learn like our OSHA class. Yeah, plus 10 hours for OSHA. Like just basic maintenance that you're gonna do every day on a machine, the pre-trips, all the stuff you're learning.
SPEAKER_04You're probably operating for only 30% of the time, but it is And you might plan to operate and you go to start your machine and it doesn't start.
SPEAKER_03So now you have to adjust and figure out what the problem is. Now you're gonna do the repair part? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, all right. I like to put that out there. Um there's a lot of there's a lot of folks that think that when they go to a class like that that that's it's just what they're gonna do. Right? And at my time at Alford, I had a lot of folks that signed up for the heavy equipment operations program and thought that that's all they were gonna do. They didn't look at the syllabus, they didn't look at anything. They just thought, well, we're just gonna run equipment all the time. There's they're gonna have 80 pieces of equipment sent here, and we're gonna pick one for the day and go run it. And yeah, it was it was so much more than that. So much more. Other things that you guys might cover, like how about some basic math? Do anything with math? Survey? A little bit? A little bit, a little bit. Builder's level and and rod. Yeah. Blueprint reading? A little bit? Yeah, a little. How about in the shop? What are you doing in there? Are you doing anything with like parts lookups?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we'll learn the different parts of like hydraulic cylinder, like your basic how do you weld, how to set up a torch properly. Okay. Lift safety. Lift safety, how to read a tire. Nice.
SPEAKER_04General hand tool knowledge, because hand tool knowledge. Not as common as some people think if they're gonna trade.
SPEAKER_01No, common sense went right out the window a long time ago. It's not very common anymore. To be fair, we uh we still cover some of that. And we cover some basic math. I was showing you guys earlier in our hands-on room, I showed you that uh that electrofuse fitting. Well, there's a there's a math class in that because you have to have that on the it has to be clamped and it has to remain clamped for so long in order for that fuse to set, in order for it to cool, everything to set properly. If you immediately hit the button, fuse it, break the clamp off of it, doesn't do it. It has a chance to to come loose and leak. There's even a math class in that. A lot of the things that we do require a lot of math. And and folks just don't necessarily know that right off the bat. I hated math in school, by the way. I was not the math guy.
SPEAKER_04It's too much homework.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Turns out though. Math is the easiest class. It's not bad content-wise, but there's just so much homework. I had the extra outside of class.
SPEAKER_01I had to make it so it applied to something. Yeah. Once it applied, then it clicked.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right? And once I started reading blueprints and setting grades and working with GPS and things like that, that's when it clicked for me. Once I could see it and see how it was affecting a grader or a bulldozer or an excavator, watch, you know, the actual pipe and the slope ratio and everything else, that's when it became big for me. All right. Well, hey, I wish you guys the best of luck at your competition. I uh I'm super excited. One of these years, I'm actually gonna go down and make it to the dang thing, one way or the other. Um but I am super excited for you guys. I think you're gonna do well from what I've seen so far, and and we'll take a look at your presentation here in a minute and uh kind of go through that. But you guys, you got the right mindset, you're coming into it, you're you're fairly confident. 30 minutes ago, you didn't even want to talk with the headsets on. So we're getting fast. Yeah, you're picking it up, you're picking it up. Now, I think that uh I think you're gonna have a good time. So um, again, best of luck to you guys, and thanks for coming up today.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for having us. Thank you.
