Texas Rising February 2010

Soaring to Success for Texans

Tarrant County College gives aerospace industry a lift

Stretching Dollars and Goals

New Heights

SDF - Tarrant County College partnered with consortium of aerospace companies

Company Name New Jobs Upgraded Jobs
Ball Corporation 0 9
Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. 150 376
Lockheed Martin 108 585
Progressive Concepts Inc. 23 180
R & B Electronics 4 12
Trinity Forge 10 38
Triumph Fabrications 25 12
Total 320 1,212
Total Trained 1,532

Source: Tarrant County College

At a time when budgets are stretched thin, consortium companies save training costs by having access to shared aerospace related courses. Tarrant County College’s (TCC) Jennifer Hawkins notes that “companies have to be very lean in this economy, and an employee who once had a niche specialty now may be given expanded responsibilities that require new skills.”

Consortium companies also have individualized training plans.

For Ball Corporation, TCC created a simulated conveyor system virtually identical to the one at the Ball plant, so students in the maintenance mechanic course could learn the ins and outs of this critical piece of equipment without having to shut down plant operations.

Find out more about the Texas Workforce Commission’s Skills Development Fund program.

by David Bloom

Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. is among seven North Texas manufacturers that have teamed up with Tarrant County College to use a $1.7 million Skills Development Fund grant to train 1,500 workers in aerospace-related jobs.

Lockheed Martin Corporation and Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. are in the business of taking their customers to new heights. They can’t afford to be grounded with a work force that lacks the skills an ever-changing industry demands.

The aerospace companies have joined forces with Tarrant County College (TCC) and five consortium partners – Ball Corporation, Progressive Concepts Inc., R&B Electronics, Trinity Forge and Triumph Fabrications – to ensure that their employees can rise to new challenges. Aided by a $1.7 million grant from the state’s Skills Development Fund (SDF), TCC is training more than 1,500 new and upgraded aerospace-related jobs that will pay an average of $36 an hour.

TCC and WorkForce Solutions for Tarrant County developed a strategy to help address aerospace industry training needs.

“We asked (the companies) what they needed, what they wanted, and we decided to go after it for them,” says Jennifer Hawkins, TCC Coordinator of Special Projects.

Marcus Jimenez, Trinity Forge human resources manager, is certainly glad they did. His firm, based in Mansfield, specializes in one-of-a-kind tooling solutions to stringent customer specifications. The recent recession has hit it hard, however, and the company had to halve its work force from 280 employees to 140. Trinity Forge is looking to the future taking advantage of the opportunity to upgrade its remaining employees’ skills.

“We desperately needed this sort of training, but couldn’t afford it,” Jimenez says. “Now, we are able to educate people in areas critical to our operation, such as blueprint reading and measurement training.”

In fiscal 2009, the Texas Workforce Commission awarded 45 SDF grants; the average was about $575,000. The training served 170 Texas businesses, creating more than 3,500 jobs and upgrading nearly 16,000 others. Twenty-five percent of the grant money must be spent on equipment and increasing instructional space at the colleges. TCC plans to purchase the sophisticated Catia software to train aerospace workers in the latest computer aided design and manufacturing (CAD-M) capabilities.

Skills Development Fund grants can generate considerable benefits throughout a community’s economy. The anticipated regional economic impact of the TCC grant, for example, is $48.9 million. For the 2010-11 biennium, the Legislature has allocated $90 million to the program. TR

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