Representatives involved in a $13.8 million initiative to support domestic shipbuilding convened last month at the Delaware County Community College Marple Campus and the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard to discuss workforce expansion, training initiatives and apprenticeship opportunities.
Among those gathered for the multiday working session were leaders from DCCC, Hanwha Philly Shipyard Inc., the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and Finland-based Satakunta University of Applied Sciences.
A news release continues:
The Building the Future: U.S. Shipbuilding Workforce Expansion Through Global Collaboration initiative hopes to share best practices learned from international partners with domestic producers, and to bolster the number of registered apprenticeship shipbuilding workers at Hanwha, a privately-owned company at the shipyard.
The Massachusetts Maritime Academy leads the NEXTSEAS initiative, a $5.8 million program funded by the U.S. Department of Labor International Labor Affairs Bureau that hopes to shore up a skilled labor shortage in the American shipbuilding industry. Satakunta University is the academy’s overseas partner.
The focus of the meeting was on two $8 million grant projects from the Labor Department aimed at expanding the nation’s shipbuilding workforce through a collaboration with DCCC and Drexel University.
DCCC and Hanwha are developing training models for commercial shipbuilding, while NEXTSEAS is focused on icebreaker vessel production workforce development as part of the national Icebreaker Collaboration Effort Pact strategy.
Representatives from NEXTSEAS and Satakunta University toured DCCC’s Marple Campus Advanced Technology Center and visited Hanwha’s facilities at the shipyard. The visit included discussions around workforce development, apprenticeship modernization, exchanging information across international boundaries and strategies to open up additional pathways to maritime careers.
Representatives from DCCC and NEXTSEAS also traveled to Washington to meet with the the Labor Department team on project implementation, partnership coordination and long-term strategies.
