The Department of Defense’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) program has awarded a one-year, $725,000 contract to Productive Resources, LLC of Springfield, Illinois to identify defense manufactures’ demand for specific workforce skills, and the supply of workers being trained in these skillsets by regional community colleges.
“This project will produce a flexible and reusable model to collect, synthesize, assess, and display information about regional workforce dynamics across training pipelines and defense contractors in five states. This will be a game changer in our ability to be proactive in addressing defense programs’ increasing needs for skilled workers.” said Ms. Adele Ratcliff, IBAS Program Director.
To execute this project, Productive Resources has partnered with Kee Energy and their subject matter experts from the Georgia Institute of Technology; advisors from the Illinois Valley Community College; and Waterloo Career Center. The team will survey manufacturers and quantify their future workforce needs. They will then compare those needs with the expected output of community colleges in the Rock Island Arsenal region to identify systemic gaps over a 5- to 10-year timeframe.
This information will lay the foundation to adjust community college curricula and recruiting and enrollment practices to both better align with DoD needs and better prepare graduates for jobs in defense manufacturing.
Productive Resources’ Senior Vice President, Mr. Michael Harmon stated: “Our expertise and background working with companies in the Rock Island Arsenal supply chain, and the various educational institutions in the region will prove invaluable in improving the overall capability of the Arsenal and its suppliers to support the warfighter. Productive Resources is excited about this opportunity to leverage its twenty-year history of data driven decision making capabilities to bring to bear the very best of its assets to accomplish our goals and help improve these supply chain constraints.”
For additional information on this project, please email the IBAS team at osd.pentagon.ousd-a-s.mbx.ibas@mail.mil.
To view more Industrial Base Policy Announcements click here.