Community Construction Outreach Program: Christopher Quinteros' Story
Community Construction Outreach Program: Lynna Vong's Story

Hear the stories of how UCSF's Community Construction Outreach Program changed the lives of two aspiring working people of San Francisco.

Local Construction Hiring

Local Construction Hiring 

Employing Local Workers on UCSF Construction Projects 

UCSF created the Community Construction Outreach Program  with a 30% local hire goal for UCSF capital projects with a contact value of $5 million and above. UCSF’s local hire goal mirrors the City & County of San Francisco’s Local Hire Ordinance. 

UCSF is partnered with CityBuild, the pre-apprenticeship training program in the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, to identify job opportunities and coordinate the employment and apprenticeships of qualified local construction trade workers. 

Since the program’s inception in 2011, UCSF’s Community Construction Outreach Program has: 

  • Placed at least 1,800 local workers as electricians, laborers, carpenters, plumbers, ironworkers, drywallers, sheet metal workers and painters across multiple San Francisco races, ethnicities and neighborhoods from:
  • OMI/Excelsior 
  • Bayview-Hunters Point 
  • Mission/Bernal Heights 
  • Visitation Valley/Sunnydale 
  • Parkside/Forest Hill 
  • Inner/Outer Richmond 
  • Sunset 
  • Western Addition/Japantown 
  • Hayes Valley/Tenderloin 
  • South of Market
  • Created economic opportunity through construction work on 39 major UCSF construction projects
  • Supported the local workforce with more than 800,000 hours in construction

Young smiling worker wearing a hard hat

“I used to earn $11/hr and now earn $30 thanks to local hire programs like CCOP and CityBuild.”

 Christopher Alfaro (D6) 1st Period Drywall Apprentice

Chris is a South of Market resident who used to earn $11/hour at Six Flags amusement park, until he learned about CityBuild from his high school football coach. Now at UCSF, he installed soffit ceilings and cut metal to build the Weill Neurosciences Building at Mission Bay. Since working in construction, Chris has gained sponsorship into Local 68L, the Drywaller's union, as well as an almost threefold increase in his hourly wages. 


Current and Recent Projects 

In the past five years, over 250 local workers have been hired for UCSF construction projects through CCOP, including: 

  • Block 34 Parking Structure and Clinical Building  
  • Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute relocation to Mt. Zion 
  • Research and Academic Building at ZSFG 
  • 2130 Post St. Student and Employee Housing 
  • Moffitt/Long Hospital’s Acute Care Nursing Unit 
  • Weil Neurosciences Building at Mission Bay
  • 2 North Point Tenant Improvement 
  • Wayne and Gladys Valley Center for Vision 
  • Tidelands Housing 
  • Bakar Precision Cancer Medical Building 
  • Clinical Sciences Building Retrofit at Parnassus

Upcoming Opportunities 

Future UCSF construction projects include: 

Parnassus Heights 

  • Health Sciences Instruction and Research Seismic Program 
  • Helen Diller Medical Center (new hospital) 
  • Parnassus Research and Administration Building 
  • Irving Street Arrival 
  • Aldea Housing Rebuild 

EXCEL Program

The UC San Francisco Excellence through Community Engagement & Learning (EXCEL) Program is a clerical/administrative training program which aims to develop the potential workforce in UCSF’s surrounding communities and provide San Francisco residents with access to health-field related employment opportunities. 

Since its inception in 1998, the program has graduated over 280 community residents with a large percentage of these graduates succeeding in obtaining career employment throughout UCSF. The program has now expanded to offer two cycles per year enrolling a total of approximately 45 interns. 

The program is a work-based learning program that uses both classroom and on-the-job training to prepare participants for career path jobs in the healthcare sector. After completing 9 weeks of computer, administrative, customer service, and medical terminology training at JVS, UCSF’s community-based training partner, participants are placed in paid, four-month clerical/administrative internships within UCSF’s various departments, throughout both the campus and medical center. 

For more information, contact Temporary Employment Program (TEP)  Kelly Anglim at [email protected].

Help Build UCSF

Are you interested in becoming a construction trade worker with UCSF? Apply for the CityBuild Academy, an 18-week Pre-Apprenticeship training in partnership with City College of San Francisco. You can find more information about CityBuild below: 

Resources for Contractors

Please use the following form to fulfill UCSF’s Community Construction Outreach Program requirements with CityBuild.

UCSF Community Construction Outreach Program (CCOP) Form

Invested in the Local Community

UCSF's mission is to advance health worldwide, starting with the city we call home. Serving the community has been ingrained in the ethos of UCSF since its early years partnering with San Francisco General Hospital in 1873, providing care and treating injured neighbors after San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake. 

Anchor Institution 

UCSF is committed to working with the community to leverage its operating budget to strengthen its ability to improve the health of the city’s underserved and under-resourced communities and to promote health equity. UCSF leadership, Chancellor Hawgood endorsed specific actions to launch the work and to advance UCSF as an “anchor institution.” Anchor institutions are place-based, mission-driven entities such as hospitals, universities, and government agencies that leverage their economic power alongside their human and intellectual resources to improve the long-term health and social welfare of their communities. 

Read more here: https://anchor.ucsf.edu/ 

 

City Partnership at Parnassus Heights  

UCSF worked closely with the City and County of San Francisco to develop a Memorandum of Understanding that refines and aligns the opportunities where UCSF and the City will collaborate on community investments to accompany the Parnassus campus plan. 

The MOU includes investments in housing, transportation, and open space, which were among the priorities identified by the community during UCSF’s extensive community engagement process. The MOU also includes UCSF's commitment to continuing and expanding its long-standing partnerships with JVS and the EXCEL program, as well as the City on community workforce development, education and equity opportunities, and behavioral health services. 

UCSF is also committed to first source hiring for available entry-level positions. UCSF will expand its construction and administrative workforce programs in partnership with the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development programs.  

UCSF will leverage its commitment as an Anchor Institution to advance economic security and opportunity in historically marginalized communities to improve health equity, including increasing spending with small, local and diverse businesses by at least 50 percent by 2024. 

Read more here: https://sfplanning.org/project/ucsf-parnassus-campus-plan-memorandum-understanding

 

Community Workforce Agreement for the New Hospital at Parnassus Heights 

The New Hospital at UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights’s Community Workforce Agreement is a partnership among all parties to ensure the new hospital build will employ a union workforce with strong representation of local labor from 22 trade unions that represent 30,000 local skilled workers.  It also ensures these new jobs will not only pay the best wages, but also will be steady and reliable source of income for SF workers and their families. Approximately 1,000 unionized construction jobs will be created for the new hospital at Parnassus Heights alone. UCSF maintains its commitment to a 30 percent local hire goal for project with CityBuild. 

Read more here: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2021/01/419651/groundbreaking-community-workforce-agreement-ucsf-parnassus-heights-project