Home / Pillars / Infrastructure & civil works
Pillar
The community's infrastructure, built by the community's own crews.
Roads, pads, drainage, water, site servicing and housing groundwork — the work our principals have done longest. Since 2009 they have run community-based programs where members train on their own Nation's infrastructure project, and finish certified, employed, or positioned to contract for themselves.
Southern interior British Columbia. Programs are delivered in the community, not at a distant campus.
What we deliver
Four things a community-based program can produce
Which of these a project targets depends on what the Nation has said it wants. Most projects produce more than one.
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Certified operators
Heavy equipment operator training delivered on site — excavator, dozer, wheel loader, articulated rock truck, grader, skid steer and backhoe — combined with the safety certifications the work requires.
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Completed community infrastructure
The training runs on work the community already needed: road, pad, drainage, land clearing, site preparation, park and trail construction. The asset is real and it stays.
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Contractors, not just employees
Entrepreneurship and small business training for participants who intend to work for themselves, so the Nation gains its own contracting capacity rather than continuing to procure it from outside.
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Local instructors
Where a Nation wants to run its own training, we develop the instructors through FAST and can licence the curriculum outright. That is the version where the capacity genuinely stays.
How the programs are funded
Almost always through a combination rather than a single source — federal and provincial workforce programs, Indigenous skills and employment training agreements, regional development funds, industry partners, and the Nation's own capital where an asset is being built. Assembling that stack, and satisfying each program's separate eligibility and reporting rules, is the grant writing stage.
Who normally holds the agreement
Eligibility rules differ by program: some require the First Nation itself to be the applicant, some the employer, some the training provider. We work to whichever structure the funding requires — including projects where the Nation is the applicant and we are the delivery contractor.
Delivered with
First Nations and tribal councils · employment and training societies · band-owned businesses · regional employment agencies · construction and industry associations.
Related
Land & forestry — the same crews on fuel management, trail corridors and post-fire recovery.
Food systems — greenhouse pads, cold-storage sites and farm access are civil works too.
Track record
Communities these programs were delivered with
Engagements documented in the program record between 2009 and 2018, across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and the Yukon — led by Dominion's principals at High Velocity Equipment Training, which no longer operates.
“We started with 12 students and ended with 12 students completing the program and graduating. Currently, 11 of these 12 students are working for our band business.”
Tracy LaboucanCEO, Economic DevelopmentWoodland Cree First Nation · September 2011
British Columbia delivery
- Westbank, BC — a fully funded 16-week heavy equipment career training program for self-identified Indigenous participants, delivered with regional WorkBC and Community Futures offices
- Okanagan — Heavy Equipment Operator training developed with WorkBC and the Southern Interior Construction Association
- Kelowna — Facilitators Advanced Skills Training delivered locally, developing instructors rather than importing them
Signed letters of reference from past community partners are available on request.
Is there work your Nation already needs done?
That project is usually the training site, and usually the reason a funder can justify the program. Tell us the priority and we will work backwards to the funding.