Success Stories
UNO-VEN and JJC Partner in Massive Retraining Effort
An anticipated job restructuring for more than 400 employee of the UNO-VEN Refinery
located in Lemont brought company officials to JJC's Institute of Economic Technology
to seek assistance in October, 1996. Company officials contracted the college to
determine our ability to handle a retraining and recertification program that would
involve the provision of 14 to 24 days of training for each employee depending on
job classification. The ensuing retraining and recertification project would turn
out to be the most ambitious and comprehensive training effort ever initiated (and
accomplished) in that industry.
After two months of pilot training groups, evaluation, course refinement, extensive
planning and working with professional schedulers and refinery personnel, the first
workers were brought into the classroom in early January of 1997. The end result:
over a 60-day period, over 65,600 man hours of classroom and hands-on training in
basic maintenance skills, safety, and process operations standard concepts were
provided at college facilities for 400 of the refinery workforce.
The college was asked to provide facilities, instructors, offices, meeting rooms,
food, special phone/computer software support, curriculum writers, instructional
design services, subject matter experts, technical and professional support staff,
computer evaluation lab support and an amazingly wide array of services to support
this high priority effort.
Challenging aspects of the request included the need to accomplish the entire effort
over a 60-day training window; the need to provide facilities and equipment for
diverse, hands-on topics such as forklift, scaffolding, rigging, pipefitting, and
manlift instruction; provision of office space, phones, faxes and computers for
refinery personnel staffed at three campus locations; the logistics of coordinating
classrooms, lunches, coffee and refreshments for up to 280 trainees per day; CD/ROM
based video projections system, VCR's overheads and technical support for up to
20 classrooms a day; set up and coordination and servicing of mobile classroom facilities
stationed at campus locations.
All this plus the day to day traumas that occur in providing instructional and supporting
services to man a start-up corporate training school was accomplished essentially
overnight. The logistics and coordination required to effectively manage these services
for our trainees and instructors stationed at three different campuses, all occurring
daily between 6 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., was monumental, and a premier example of the
ability of a community college to respond to local business needs.
This project, according to one company official, exceeded the highest of company
expectations in regards to scope, quality and efficiency of services provided. The
combined efforts of UNO-VEN and JJC in this ambitious project accomplished an unprecedented
feat for worker retraining in the petroleum refining industry and again demonstrates
the strategic role the community college plays in the retraining of America's workforce.
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