BITA

Four California high schools running the Building Industry Technology Academy (BITA) competed in the Sacramento Regional Builders Exchange Education Foundation (SRBXEF) two-day challenge to design and build a 96 square-foot structure.
 
Student teams gathered at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento on May 10th and 11th to compete in this fun but rigorous learning experience that also promotes career awareness in the construction trades.
 
OPEN COMPETITION:
Architectural Award, SAVA Charter School
Best of Show, Burbank High School BITA Program
 
TRADITIONAL COMPETITION:
Architectural Award, William Daylor High School
Best of Show, Cordova High School BITA Program – Red team
 
OPEN AND TRADITIONAL:
Team Safety Award, Wheatland High School BITA Program
Wayne Johnson Safety Person of the Year, Robert Martin, Winters High School
Rookie Team of the Year, Cosumnes Oaks High School
 
Congratulations to all winning and participating teams! This challenge was no easy feat.
 
We need our industry to help continue the success of the local BITA programs, the instructors and students. To learn how you can support the BITA program, please contact Jill Herman at jherman@mychf.org.
 
The California Homebuilding Foundation (CHF) is a dedicated contributor to educational advancements through the distribution of scholarships, grants and promotion of certification programs. Click here to learn more about CHF and the BITA program.

Click here to read the full press release by CBIA.

HBC Design/Build Competition from Orange County Dept. of Education on Vimeo.

More than 150 high school students from across the region spent two days combing through blue prints, hammering together wood frames and running plumbing through scale-sized model homes as part of the HBC Home/Design Competition organized by the North Orange County ROP.

Eleven teams of students competed in the event held last week at Reliable Lumber in Huntington Beach. The competition was part of Building Industry Technology Academy, or BITA, a career pathway program in high schools that trains students for jobs in the construction industry.

Certified building inspectors served as judges, measuring teams’ projects by safety, cleanliness of worksites, durability of the model homes, and other factors.

Read the rest of the article on Orange County Dept. of Education's website here.

The Building Industry Association of Southern California, Inc. (BIASC) and California Housing Foundation (CHF) joined forces to host the 2017 Celebrity Waiter event on March 10th at the Turnip Rose in Newport Beach.

The Celebrity Waiter event is a zany and fun charity dinner featured local building industry “celebrities” serving and entertaining their selected guests for the evening. Highlights from the evening included Shea Homes’ Bob Yoder as President Donald Trump and Brookfield’s Adrian Foley as Austin Powers.

The event benefited education programs such as the Building Industry Technology Academy (BITA)—a comprehensive, four-year high school trades program, providing students across California the training they need to enter the building workforce after graduation.

CHF as a foundation itself invests in the future of the homebuilding industry through endowments that provide college and graduate school scholarships and fund research on key public policy issues. CHF’s research organization, CIRB, compiles and publishes statewide construction and new home statistics.

Click the link here to view the photos from the event on our Facebook page!

Anaheim High School, Valencia High School and Luther Burbank High School have combined their efforts, completing four playhouse structures, to win this year’s Inaugural Statewide Design/Build Competition on June 27th and 28th at the California State Capitol in Sacramento.

The schools are a part of the Building Industry Technology Academy (BITA), a comprehensive four-year high school program aimed at producing skilled professionals who will be qualified and confident to enter the homebuilding workforce. The program is promoted by the California Homebuilding Foundation and developed by BIA member companies and education leaders.

The statewide construction competition gathered educators and over 350 students from Youth Build divisions and various Southern California High Schools, Community Colleges and Regional Occupational Programs (R.O.Ps) in a collective endeavor to highlight the importance of Career Technical Education (CTE) and workforce development programs at the high school level.

Students received a warm welcome from some of the State’s top leadership, Assembly members Jim Cooper (D - Elk Grove), Tom Daly (D - Anaheim), Ling Ling Chang (R - Anaheim), and Jim Frazier (D - Oakley), as well as, staff from the offices of Senators Richard Pan, Tom Berryhill, Bob Huff and Assembly member Ken Cooley.

Valencia High School and Anaheim High School previously won 1st and 2nd place at the 27th Annual Design/Build Competition in April, which was coordinated by the Home Builders Committee (HBC) and the Building Industry Association of Southern California, Inc. (BIASC). The competition was held at the OC Fair & Event Center’s 2016 Imaginology Event in Costa Mesa on Saturday, April 16 and Sunday, April 17 where the state winners previously competed alongside Cordova High School, another BITA school.

Watch the video coverage of the statewide competition from Good Day Sacramento below.