On the north end of Howell, the men and women who will help construct Detroit's next skyscraper, a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac and rebuild Michigan's crumbling roads and bridges are learning how to make precision cuts into the earth and maneuver cranes for jobs where inches matter.

The Operating Engineers Local 324 trains heavy equipment and crane operators on a sprawling 550-acre plot of land in the exurbs that the union started building a half-century ago on the north side of M-59. On any given weekday, dozens of excavators and bulldozers roll across the forested training ground, as apprentices and journeymen practice operating increasingly high-tech machinery.

The union's business of training apprentices is booming with 400 active apprentices. "We'll be at 500 before we know it," said John Hartwell, apprenticeship coordinator for the Operating Engineers.

The Operating Engineers are about to break ground on a 19,000-square-foot, nine-classroom addition to their training center. The union anticipates years of increased demand for its skilled workers to build the Gordie Howe International Bridge, billionaire Dan Gilbert's Hudson's site skyscraper and replace the countless bridges in Michigan that are deemed structurally deficient.

But most will have a long trek out to Howell to learn how. It's the only heavy machinery training facility of its kind in Michigan funded in partnership with infrastructure companies — and probably can't be easily replicated to make this particular trade more accessible to an interested worker in Detroit or Dowagiac.

In the push by state policymakers and employers to steer more young people into once-stigmatized skilled trades, the limitations of the existing infrastructure for training workers combined with a fractured network of apprenticeships and training programs has surfaced as a new clog in the talent pipeline.

"The space you need to do what we're doing and the amount of noise we're making, we need to be tucked away in Howell," said Dan McKernan, spokesman for the Operating Engineers Local 324. "It's not just something you drop in a city block."

The shortage of skilled-trades workers has exposed how few training facilities there are in Michigan after decades of high schools closing down career and technical education programs.

"I think we're continuing to pay ramifications for that," said Jim Sawyer, president of Macomb Community College, which offers skilled-trades programs in building construction and welding.