Denver Construction Careers Program: Veterans Count Toward Target Hiring

Article XI of chapter 28 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code (Ordinance 387-23, adopted May 1, 2023) sets workforce requirements on City construction contracts and work orders estimated at $10 million or more, such as Department of Transportation and Infrastructure and Denver International Airport projects, unless they are excluded as emergency or paving work or because a funder's rules forbid it. Denver Economic Development and Opportunity runs it as the Denver Construction Careers Program. What it requires. A share of total construction hours worked by Colorado residents must go to people in one or more target categories: 15% in the article's first year, 17% in the second and 20% from the third. On vertical construction, 3.75% of hours must also go to apprentices in a target category. Contractors that miss the requirements pay $31 for each hour short, up to 3% of the contract, unless they keep to an approved compliance plan. Who counts. DRMC 28-322 makes the target categories people living in the programme's priority areas of economic need, graduates of approved pre-apprenticeship programmes, and veterans, and it defines a veteran as "any person who has served any amount of time in any branch of the United States Armed Forces". There is no discharge test and no minimum service. Hours are counted in every category the worker belongs to. How to use it. Tell a contractor on a covered project, or the programme through its jobseeker pages, that you are a veteran, so your hours are recorded in the City's compliance system. Approved pre-apprenticeship programmes are a second route into the same requirement.