Tradesperson Spotlight - Tori Frank, Carpenter
RMC’s blog series, Tradesperson Spotlight, features conversations with real tradespeople that get to the heart of what it’s like to work in the trades, and what drives their dedication to build the world around us and break down stereotypes.
Two years ago, Tori Frank was in Kitimat, BC, hard at work on the Rio Tinto Wharf overlooking the gorgeous scenery of the coastline. As a carpenter, this certainly wasn’t a project she ever expected to do (one usually doesn’t equate work on the ocean with carpentry!), but when the opportunity came up to take on such an exciting new job, she jumped on it.
“I was a bridgeman carpenter in a piledriving union on that job”, she explains, “we did lots of rigging with cranes on a barge, lifting piles, pouring forms full of concrete.” This is why she loves the carpentry trade; it’s such a broad field that is needed on almost every construction job, it’s endless how much she can learn, and there are such incredible opportunities.
Tori has always loved challenging, hands-on work, calling herself a ‘tomboy’ from a young age. Her Dad loved cars and she learned how to change tires and oil when she was little. After graduating high school, she cut grass at the company her dad worked at – her first time wearing steel toes and working long hours. A year later, at the same company, she moved on to running heavy equipment like an 815 compactor and was soon driving rock trucks and helping the surveyor. “I wanted to be out of the vehicles and working with my hands, so I tried every trade I could until I got accepted into the millworking carpentry pre-employment program at NAIT”, she says. “I really didn’t care which trade I ended up in!”
Differing from a typical apprenticeship program, the pre-employment program was 8 months long and gave her 4 months of exposure to cabinetmaking, and then 4 months of carpentry education. She loved the program and was happy to see lots of other women enrolled as well. Ultimately, she realized that she didn’t have the patience for intricate cabinetmaking and chose the carpentry path.
After she got her journeyman ticket, the job hunt was a challenge. The experience she had was all in commercial work, but most of the available jobs were residential so her employers didn’t want to pay her a journeyman rate and she was always the first to be laid off. Her advice for overcoming this hurdle:
“Go to work with a positive attitude and be the hardest worker there. Just keep going and eventually the experience will rack up. Network as much as possible – every job I’ve had has been through knowing someone and building a reputation for hard work and positivity.”
She says the pros of being a tradesperson vastly outweigh any negatives. “Having a ticket means I can work anywhere and there are always jobs available for me. The longest I’ve waited for my next job after being laid off was one month. I had a hard time getting used to being laid off when projects were done at first, but you get used to it. I just plan ahead, save money and have lots of options since there are so many types of carpentry I can do.” In the future, she sees herself going into safety roles or project coordinating. She won’t leave construction though, saying “I love the relationships and unfiltered joking that you couldn’t get in an office!”
Tori prefers industrial carpentry versus residential because the pay is better, meaning that the people she works with tend to be happier and there are better safety protocols. On the wharf job, she was making $42 per hour with benefits and a pension, and working two weeks on and one week off. And, she says, “safety can feel extreme and be annoying, but when it’s not there you really notice.”
The lack of safety became a problem on one of her early jobs in the bitter cold of winter, when she was working on a site where she and her coworkers were getting carbon monoxide poisoning from bad ventilation, and she got frostbite because there were no heated areas to take breaks. In typical Tori fashion though, she turned this experience into a new opportunity – she reached out to Helly Hansen executives and told them that they could benefit from marketing their winter line to the construction industry, specifically to women in construction. They loved the idea, and Tori is now a Helly Hansen ambassador, receiving their newest women’s clothing lines to test out, review and share action shots of her on the job.
Since the wharf job, Tori went on to a few challenging roles before finding the latest fantastic one. First was a safety job for a 3-month shut down which involved 14-hour night shifts (plus driving), 6 days a week. She then moved to Ontario, working as a customer-facing technician which proved to be tough: setting up 28' extension ladders when one is 5'4” is not easy, plus climbing power lines and working near extreme voltage was quite the change from her usual work at a table saw. She gained a newfound respect for ‘cable guys’ - it was not easy! Even so, she became one of the top technicians in the valley through customer reviews and the company’s internal performance indicators that judge the speed and efficiency of work.
While Tori was in this role she was headhunted on LinkedIn – she definitely recommends setting up a LinkedIn profile as a tradesperson if you haven’t already! She was contacted and offered what she calls her ‘opportunity of a lifetime’ as a health and safety representative for the Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF) project at the nuclear plant in her area. Tori is now working in the planning stages before the project kicks off and is loving all the learning that comes with it.
So, now that she’s experienced so much, what advice does she have for new apprentices? She explains that when she first got into the trades she was down on herself that she couldn’t lift heavy things until her first journeyman told her about ‘mechanical advantage’ – if you can’t pick it up, pry it up. Use machines, tools and, most importantly, your brain, to figure out another way.
She also encourages everyone to take good care of their bodies: exercise and fuel their bodies well. Even at 27, she says her body can get sore from the hard work. “Invest in clothing and safety gear – every old guy on site has always said that the biggest thing they wish they did differently was look a little less cool and put their knee pads on. Buy good winter gear for cold weather, hearing protection, and kneepads”.
As for being a woman in the trades, she advises to “set boundaries early with certain men. Sometimes, their way of building a relationship is to bug you, but if they keep bugging you about the same things then you can start believing it. So, start standing up for yourself.”
When she was young, Tori remembers getting told to do her homework or “you’ll end up as a janitor”, and the prevailing expectation was that she’d go to college. She started seeing social posts comparing college grads making $60K a year with huge debt to tradespeople making $150K a year with no debt. That sold her on the trades, and now, all of her adventures in the trades are captured on her social media accounts. Young girls message her to tell her how amazing her life is and ask her how she does it. “Anyone can do it”, she tells them. “You’re never bored, always learning, always active, and you feel like you achieve something at the end of the day.”
Interested in working together on your project?
Since 2009 we’ve worked closely with hundreds of clients to make their dreams come true — and we’d love to work with you, too! Please get in touch to get the conversation started today.