Industrial Development

As a high school senior, Brayen Jones is already well on the way to a lucrative career. He’s a certified welder and a certified fabricator, and he’s putting those skills to use at the SteelFab plant in his hometown of Dublin, where he works up to 50 hours a week when his schedule permits.

Brayen made a connection with SteelFab – a national company with 13 fabrication facilities in the U.S. – through a representative who visited his welding class at East Laurens High School. He began work in July 2024, and he can sense his skills getting sharper every day.

“It’s helped me a lot on my blueprint reading, my welding symbol reading, and how to fabricate,” Brayen says. “Now that I’m doing it every night, I’ve gotten a lot better and I’m confident I can fab anything that comes through.”

Brayen’s career path can be traced all the way to his middle school years, when he first picked up a welding torch on his family’s farm.

“My uncle used to work on roads, welding a lot of pipe, and he taught me how to weld,” Brayen explains. “I started by fixing tractors and farm implements. At first, it was tricky, but after about two months I finally got the hang of it.”

Brayen took Ag Mechanics as a freshman at East Laurens, then transitioned into instructor Bill Carmen’s Welding pathway as a sophomore. Today he’s dual-enrolled at Oconee Fall Line Technical College, where he continues to learn under instructor Josh Bridges.

He’s also been an active SkillsUSA competitor, beginning with an opportunity that arose his freshman year under then-advisor Dean Cutler (who’s now a Construction Ready team member).

“When I started high school, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do, but I said, ‘I’ll try SkillsUSA; that looks like it would be fun,’” Brayen recalls. “Regionals were coming up and I still didn’t have a competition, then Mr. Cutler said he had a spot in Welding Sculpture. He said, ‘I’ll be here to help you the whole way.’ So I did that and made it to State and finished 10th my first year. Ever since then I’ve been a competitor every year and have gone to as many competitions as I can.”

Brayen began competing in live welding contests as a sophomore, when he again qualified for the SkillsUSA State Championships. As a junior, he was derailed by illness, but in November 2024 he placed third at the AGC Georgia Southeast Georgia Skills Challenge and qualified for the February 2025 trip to the State Championships Atlanta.

Whether he’s competing or working, Brayen says welding is a form of escape for him: “I find it peaceful. There’s something about every time I drop my helmet, it seems like everything else goes away and I can just focus on myself and my welds. I can look at a weld and say ‘I need to fix that,’ so I can correct myself without needing somebody to be looking over me.”

In an industry where the average hourly rate is $35 an hour, that kind of ability and confidence translates to a bright future.