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President’s Award Recognizes Achievement of HBI Job Corps Graduate

Fabian Liera, a graduate of the Home Builders Institute's (HBI) plumbing program at the Fred G. Acosta Job Corps Center in Tucson, Ariz., and a new associate member of the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, received the first NAHB President’s Award from 2004 NAHB President Bobby Rayburn during the association’s Jan. 14 board meeting held in conjunction with the International Builders’ Show in Orlando, Fla.

The 28-year-old owner and general manager of Ironwood/Winnelson Plumbing Supply in Tucson began his career in 1993 working as a plumber’s assistant. Liera remembers bringing home his first paycheck and being greeted by stunned silence when his parents saw the amount. Soon after, his father left the restaurant where he was working and a year later was providing plumbing and other services for swimming pools.

Opening his own company in October of 2003, Liera took over Tucson/Winnelson, a local franchise that had been losing money for years, and started shifting the focus of its operations to catering to the consumer, with a showroom and sales personnel. Last year, he opened a sister company, Tucson/Winnelson, and with managerial help from his brother-in-law, also an HBI Job Corps graduate, he was able to break even with an estimated $4.2 million in business. This year, he expects to be showing a profit by March.

Of Liera’s nine other employees, two are graduates of the same HBI plumbing program that helped him pursue his career at the Acosta center. He has established an internship program for HBI plumbing students, “because I wanted to give back to a program that’s done so much for me,” he says.

The NAHB President’s Award will be presented annually to an HBI Job Corps graduate who has overcome adversity and gone on to success in the home building industry.

Home Builders Institute, the workforce development arm of NAHB, is the largest vocational trainer in Job Corps, which provides federally funded residential job training and education programs for at-risk youth who are between the ages of 16 and 24.

NAHB members interested in hiring Job Corps graduates should e-mail C.J. Tirone at HBI, or call 800-959-0052 x8910.

Photograph by Oscar Einzig Photographers

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