Texas State Technical College said goodbye to some of its students at graduation Friday.
One of them is jumping into life head first, starting with Big Creek Construction.
Mariano Perez started working at the age of 13 for his fathers residential concrete business. After working long hours and sometimes on holidays he found respect and love for the work.
"I found a passion for it just seeing how hard my father worked," Perez said. "To see something go up and say I did that is where the passion comes into play."
Perez is the first TSTC student to be hired at Big Creek Construction right out of school. Although many TSTC alum works for the company none started right after graduating.
Wade Miller, Big Creek's Assistant Director, is thrilled to have Perez come aboard.
"We are excited to have Mariano coming aboard," Miller said. "He's a very impressive young man, and we expect him to do well at our company."
Big Creek works closely with the Texas Department of Transportation road and bridge improvement projects. According to Miller, TxDOT is receiving an increase in projects due to the state propositions being passed by voters, which means more business for not only TxDOT, but Big Creek as well.
"This equates to roughly 70,000 employees needed to build this work," Miller said. "The workforce across our industry and state is aging. We are running out of people to do this work. For this reason, programs by TSTC make sense to contractors like us."
Even with the amount of work that is to come, Perez is all in.
"And hopefully people will want to join as well and help out because we really need them. And let's go get to it and build the roads in Texas," Perez said.
For more information on Texas State Technical College visit their website.
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