David Helveston, president and CEO of Associated Builders and Contractors’ Pelican Chapter, says Meta’s Baton Rouge workforce academy will launch Nov. 2 with an inaugural class of 50 to 100 trainees. The academy will reside at ABC’s Baton Rouge Training Center at 19251 Highland Road.
Helveston says a second cohort is scheduled to begin in December, though enrollment figures for that group have yet to be determined. Each cohort will train for five weeks. Participants will have a job lined up with a Meta contractor before they even begin their training, he says. That means they’ll already know which contractor they’ll work for and which Meta construction site they’ll be assigned to, whether in Louisiana or another state. Contractors are currently finalizing those placements, a process that involves interviews, background checks, drug screenings and employment offers.
“I think one of the exciting things about the program is everybody is guaranteed a job on a Meta jobsite before they even enter into the program,” Helveston says.
Trainees will receive compensation while completing the program, and Meta will cover travel expenses and lodging for out-of-town participants. It’s currently unclear how many participants in the first Baton Rouge cohort will be local residents and how many will be traveling from elsewhere in the state or country.
Announced in June, the $115 million initiative is designed to train workers for jobs in AI infrastructure—think fields like data center construction, fiber installation, grid modernization and power generation support. The program, which is free to participants and requires no prior experience, will function essentially as a talent pipeline for Meta, supplying the skilled workers needed to build out its data centers and supporting infrastructure.
Baton Rouge was chosen as one of four pilot markets for the academy, along with locations in Indiana, Ohio and Texas. Read more about the academy here.
Meta is currently building its largest data center to date in Richland Parish, a campus dubbed Hyperion. The site is expected to support 7,500 construction workers at peak.
