Ontario needs new homes and Durham College students are training to build them

Ontario wants to see 1.5 million new homes in the coming years and estimates that 27,000 new workers are needed by 2027 to build them. Durham College (DC) will play an important role in training them.

DC offers a full slate of programs that will support homebuilding in Ontario as well as industrial and commercial construction to benefit the economy.

Sina Safinia is a professor in the Construction Management – Honours Bachelor program, which is now in its second year at DC.

He has 18 years of experience in the industry, having worked on residential and industrial construction projects, and says employers will be looking to scoop up DC grads.

“The demands for construction management, project management skills are extremely high in the industry. Every time I speak with people in the construction industry from different sides like from the owner side, the contractor side—they all say that they need young workers who are educated in Canada specifically.”

Graduates have several career opportunities in both the private and public sector, according to Safinia, from working as a project manager, estimator, or developer to working on the legal side of business contracts.

“In the Greater Toronto Area there are lots of construction projects going on and there are a lot more planned for the near future.”

The program includes two field placements, one mandatory and one optional. The first cohort of students in the program will be doing their field placement at the end of their second year in 2024 and he expects that for some students, their placement will lead to employment.

“Our students have a really good chance to get jobs because, again, the demand is very high in the industry.”

In addition to the honours bachelor program in construction management, DC also offers programs like Civil Engineering Technology and Architectural Technology.

At DC’s Whitby campus, the Faculty of Skilled Trades & Apprenticeship supports residential construction by training carpenters, electricians, plumbers, crane operators and more.

“DC’s Whitby campus trains more than 4,000 skilled trades students annually and they will have an immediate impact on the economy in Durham Region and across the province,” said Whitby campus principal and executive dean Rebecca Millburn. “Post-secondary and apprenticeship students are training across 14 different fields within the skilled trades portfolio and each student will be able to transition their job-ready skills to the workforce and help support our economy.”

Find out more about the 145+ programs offered at Durham College.