After hearing input from local companies regarding the difficulty in finding skilled workers – especially in basic maintenance – officials from Pearl River Community College’s Forrest County campus have helped to find a solution to fill that gap: the Wildcat Mobile Training Maintenance Unit.
The unit, which was unveiled January 4 at the PRCC Lowery Woodall Advanced Technology Center in the Hattiesburg-Forrest County Industrial Park, will feature “maintenance skills bootcamps,” which support the growth and development of skilled technical jobs with annual wages ranging from $34,000 to $70,000. The initiative is made possible by a grant from AccelerateMS, utilizing Mississippi Workforce Enhancement Training.
“It’s a 53-foot trailer that we can pull and use it as a classroom to do training on-site with different companies,” said Rebecca Brown, who serves as dean of workforce, economic development and adult education for PRCC. “So that’s really good for them … because they don’t have to lose time with their employees traveling; we can just keep it onsite to do the training right there for a couple weeks.
“This is to help fill that (employment) gap, so they can work on investing in their existing employees, who are great employees; they just need additional skills.”
The Wildcat unit features more than 60 training modules, including vacuum technology, pneumatics, hydraulics, vibration analysis, laser alignment and industrial bearings.
So far, several local companies have partnered with PRCC to use the Wildcat unit, including Berry Global, Green Bay Converting, Hood Industries, Idaho Forest Group, Johnson Controls, Kohler Engines, Resinall, Sofidel, SuperStud, Western Container, Wis-Pak and Zeon Chemicals so far.
“This is just looping back to say ‘we did receive those (AccelerateMS) funds, but more importantly, now we’ve done something really good with them, to deploy this mobile maintenance training unit,” Brown said. “We’ve already trained more than 280 people, and we have another 500 scheduled to go through by the end of June.”
That includes upcoming trips to Port Bienville and Stennis Space Center, where the Wildcat Mobile Maintenance Training Unit will be used in support of credit classes.
“This is really huge for us, because keeping up with current technology that companies need is extremely expensive,” Brown said. “To get all of this training equipment and the trailer, that’s around a $600,000 cost, which is extremely hard to fit into a regular budget, if not impossible. So accessing those funds through the state workforce system with AccelerateMS, letting us provide this training … this is current equipment that’s relevant to what (employees) are going to be doing on the job, so it’s just really, really big.
“It’s also a great cost-savings for companies, because in doing the training with us, we do ask them to share the cost, but they’re generally going to pay maybe just 20 percent of what it may cost to do the same training with a private vendor. That means they may choose to do the training that they may otherwise choose not to do, so that’s what we hope for, and that’s what we’ve seen so far with the companies we’ve worked with.”
To learn more about maintenance training and schedule a stop, businesses can contact PRCC Workforce Education at (601) 554-4646 or by email at workforce@prcc.edu.
