Road Warrior

Since beginning a career in construction, Ian Miller has logged a lot of miles between his Atlanta home and job sites in Alabama, Colorado, Nevada, Ohio, Indiana and more. All that travel is a fitting metaphor, because the past decade has been quite a journey for the Holder Construction field engineer.

Ian was one of the early students in Construction Ready’s Pre-Apprenticeship program. He graduated at the program’s first training location, Westside Works, in November 2014 – back when Mercedes-Benz Stadium was under construction and many of the new hires went to work for Holder, Hunt, Russell, Moody (HHRM), the joint venture that built the facility.

At the time, Ian had recently completed a prison sentence, and construction wasn’t even on his radar. “I had no idea what I was going to do,” he remembers. “I had no thoughts of going out and being a construction worker. If it wasn’t for Construction Ready, I wouldn’t be in this career.”

Upon learning about the new construction “boot camp” at Westside Works, Ian began his unexpected journey into the skilled trades.

“It was a learning experience from day one,” he says. “Everything the instructor said, everything he showed us, everything we trained on, all of it pertained to what really goes on at the job site.”

The training gave Ian a head start when he began an entry-level job with Holder Construction at the stadium. As the project neared completion, he was assigned to a Carpenter Helper role on a new NCR facility in Midtown Atlanta. After that he was moved to Holder’s Engineering Services department, for whom he worked on two more high-profile Atlanta-area projects: Sandy Springs’ City development and the State Farm campus in Dunwoody.

Looking back on those first years with Holder, Ian says it “felt great to be hired by one of the top construction companies. The whole experience taught me responsibility. It taught me about growing up, about being a man, about being out on my own.”

As an Engineering Technician, Ian continued to build experience in Atlanta, and Holder also began to send him to help on out-of-town projects. By September 2018 he was ready for another promotion and more responsibility. Assuming the role of Assistant Field Engineer, Ian went to Las Vegas to work on a confidential project. He was again promoted in March of 2019, taking on a salaried position as a Field Engineer.

In 2020, Ian was honored as a Graduate of the Year in Construction Ready’s Champion Awards program. Since August of that year, he has worked primarily in the Midwest, including an arts center at The Ohio State University, a pair of confidential projects in Ohio, and another confidential project in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In October 2024 he reached his latest career milestone, a role as Chief Field Engineer.

In a company email announcing the promotion, Ian was praised for “his passion to develop others [and] share his knowledge and experience with those around him, along with his ‘team player’ mindset to make a positive impact.” The email also noted that “Ian embraces his team and creates a trusting relationship amongst them with his determination, positive energy, and ‘do the right thing’ approach.”

He’s certainly come a long way from his early days in construction, when he was a novice employee “doing a little bit of everything,” as he recalls, to gain experience. Today part of his job is helping recruit and develop talent.

“It’s good to see those guys grow,” he says. “I have a guy who’s been with me maybe three years and I’ve seen him grow from basically what I did when I was a carpenter to becoming a field engineer.”

Though Ian works a lot on big-picture tasks in an office environment these days, he still spends plenty of time on job sites, and he embraces his position as a role model for his field employees.

“I tell some of those guys, ‘I used to be in the same situation,’” he says. “This is my story. This is where I came from. Definitely, I think it inspires some.”

And to anyone at the very beginning of the journey – that is, someone who is considering Construction Ready training – Ian says, “Go for it. Stick with it. Don’t give up. It might be hard to get up and be at that gate at 6 o’clock in the morning, but it’s worth it.”