When the construction industry needs more equipment, OEMs step up production, fill the orders, and crank out more machinery. Mission accomplished. But what happens when the industry needs thousands more equipment technicians?

While there’s no factory where skilled, well-trained technicians come dropping off an assembly line, the Associated Equipment Distributors Foundation is working to reverse the decade-long workforce shortage and repopulate highly qualified technicians into the job pool for factory-authorized equipment distributor companies.

The foundation enables 400 skilled technicians to graduate every year from its AED-accredited schools nationally, but Oak Brook, Ill.-based AED last week announced that output is about to triple in the coming four years.

Through a strategic program called “Vision 2012,” the foundation (the nonprofit educational arm of AED) will continue to build its community-based, school-to-work program through partnerships with dozens of post-secondary heavy diesel/technical schools across the country — by the year 2012 they intend to see about 1,200 ready-to-work graduates per year launching into technical careers at dealer service departments.

To date, the AED foundation has accredited 19 technical schools, a number that will climb nearly 60 percent to 30 AED-accredited schools that meet rigorous curriculum standards established by distributor technical experts. But to get the grassroots growing even faster, the foundation is also aiming to establish alliance partnerships with 40 additional technical schools that, with local AED dealer assistance, are working toward meeting AED’s national technical standards.

The AED foundation has committed significant resources to undo negative stereotypes about the construction industry, recruit young people to the technician field nationwide, train them close to home — where most students want to ultimately settle — and place them in challenging, well-paid careers with AED factory-authorized dealerships.

AED, based in Oak Brook, Ill., is an association of independent distributors, manufacturers and other organizations involved in the distribution of construction equipment and related products and services in North America and throughout the world. AED members sell, service and rent equipment to markets that include heavy and light construction, mining, agriculture, forestry, aggregates, engines and industrial.