WINTERVILLE, N.C. (WNCT) — The NC Department of Transportation continued its technical training series for construction contractors across the area at Pitt Community College on Thursday.

The NCDOT is bringing its training to Pitt County with the mission to increase the number of businesses that can contract to build and maintain the state transportation network. The course training includes work traffic control, utility installation, working with large contractors, and more.

“These people could assist prime contractors with that work, so it helps small business, it also helps minority business but it helps us all,” said Warren Walker, NCDOT small business technical trainer.

“Go through hands-on page-by-page subject by subject and we get to help them look for where to find the answers to the questions that we have in the presentation that we go through,” said Tommy Byrd, NCDOT Small Business technical trainer.

NCDOT started these training sessions due to increased building costs and a loss of skilled workers following COVID-19. The students taking part in the training receive instructions on how to navigate Department of Transportation specifications, standard drawings,and bidding, which can be crucial to small contractors that need help improving their knowledge in these areas.

“You know good companies to help with these prime contractors to be successful, you know, we travel a lot of roads and maintain a lot of roads in the state so its very important to keep that going,” said Byrd.

“Continue that work today, our main mission is to lift people up. So we’re doing this for the central construction unit. We also work this kind of thing for the Office of Civil Rights. And I can tell you right now when you see one person that didn’t have a job get a job and hire three more, that’s what it’s all about.” said Walker.

Their goal was to have at least 300 people registered for the session, something that has already been met. Moving forward, they have already seen benefits from the training session and will assess the future of the program down the road.

If you missed this NCDOT Technical Training session, the next ones will be in Cary and Charlotte.