Associated Builders and Contractors presented Construction Workforce Awards for the 2022 Young Professional of the Year, Craft Professional of the Year and Craft Instructor of the Year at its national convention in San Antonio on March 15. Here is a sneak preview from full profiles with the honorees to come in the June issue of Construction Executive.

"When I was going through middle school, to me it came easy. I wasn't challenged and I'm the type of person that needs a challenge. Throughout middle school they had a program where you could go to the technical high school and start playing around in some of the shops. To me, electrical was a big unknown. I didn't know how it worked and it intrigued me. So, I decided that was the path I wanted to follow," says Adam Haywood, foreman/safety officer at Premier Power LLC, Craft Professional of the Year.

"Anybody will tell you that starting a business is not an easy thing to do. I watched my dad struggle through that and he did a fantastic job. He raised me and my brother and my sister as a single father and it was inspiring to see the journey that he went through. I'm really honored to be able to follow in his footsteps," says Luke Perry, chief operating officer at Perry Contracting Inc., Young Professional of the Year.

"I got into it on a fluke. Popular Mechanics was a good magazine way-back-when. It told you how to do a lot of things—I put a light in over my sink and a hood in over my stove. Everything went great. Then I hooked a dryer up—and it didn't go so great. I got shocked pretty bad. About a week later, I saw a thing in the paper that said, 'Learn Electrical Wiring. Go to the Trades School.' So I told my wife, 'If I'm going to keep fooling with this stuff, I better find out more about it,'" says Larry Harris, electrical technology teacher at The Academy of Craft Training, Craft Instructor of the Year.