Playing in the sandbox with big rigs is key to the curriculum at Heavy Construction Academy.
On any given day, 30 students — many of them veterans looking for a new career after the military — can be found riding around in excavators, front-end loaders, skid steers, motor graders, backhoes, rollers, bulldozers and articulated dump trucks.
In just six weeks, the students learn all the skills they need to safely operate nine different pieces of heavy equipment on about 12 acres of cleared land outside the academy at 48 Pine Road.
