Barb Bachmeier has been a carpenter for the past 40 years. Starting an apprenticeship in 1984 and earning her Red Seal certification in 1990, she now has an eye on retirement and is leaning on the adage of leaving the industry in better position than she found it through advocation of inclusivity, mentoring, changing attitudes, teaching safe work procedures and positive promotion of the trades.
Carpentry has taken Bachmeier across the province, with stints in a number of locations that include the Site C dam, Commercial, Institutional, Industrial and various pulp mills, mines, and gas plants all over British Columbia.
“I came to the Cariboo for four-and-a-half-month job in Barkerville,” recalled Bachmeier. “I was doing construction and reconstruction of heritage buildings, and I forgot to go home.”
Over the course of her career, Bachmeier and BC’s construction industry have seen significant changes, from increased standards and improved inclusivity to challenges such as a general worker shortage and the long-term retention of underrepresented groups.
“We are going to be short 700,000 tradespeople by 2028,” said Bachmeier. “The boomers are retiring pretty much en masse in the next little while. Myself, I’m thinking of 2026. So, we need to replace these workers.”
Bachmeier is an advocate for inclusivity in trades, an issue that she and groups such as BCCWITT are working to promote and encourage.
“Today, it’s a lot better,” stated Bachmeier. “It’s still not 100-percent inclusive. One of the things that I find sad is that women tend to start in trades, but they don’t finish. There are many reasons for this, and I believe much of it has to do with attitudes. There’s a high percentage that drop out. We need to change that, and I’m not exactly sure how.”
To start, Bachmeier is looking towards industry leaders such as employers, unions and post-secondary institutions to shift their focus and take the lead around building awareness on the issues she has raised. In the meantime, she is doing her part to promote the trades to the next generation of skilled trade workers herself and was on-site to volunteer with the Construction Foundation of BC’s Trades Discovery Camp in Quesnel in the Summer of 2024.
“We need to inspire and show young people that trades represent a great way to make a living,” concluded Bachmeier.
