Ingalls Shipbuilding is expecting to build more than just ships.
The Pascagoula-based company is hopeful that its collaboration with the Capps Center and the state’s community college network will enable them to assemble a fleet of trained and qualified pipefitters who will want to come to their shipyard to work.
Through the company’s broad-based training program called HARBOURS, which is an acronym for Heroes Are Building Our Ships, Ingalls’ strategic desire is to develop a workforce by partnering with community colleges and K-12 schools.
“All of them who successfully complete will get an offer from Ingalls Shipbuilding,” said Fred Howell manager, talent acquisition.
Howell said their visit to the Capps Center on Saturday was not just to identify people who want to go to work for the shipwright, but also steer prospects to the Capps’ pipefitter training course. Because they believe the course offers future benefits to Ingalls. “We’re always going to be looking for great pipefitters,” Howell added.
According to him, the Capps Center has a proven track record for training people and Ingalls has hired people from there in the past.
He said the center has a strong pipefitter training program that adequately prepares the students for real life work because it teaches to Navy standards and Howell stated that those are the highest standards there are. He said those who complete the course will have a variety of options.
Program instructors have to successfully complete a certification process through the National Center for Construction Education & Research before they are allowed to teach. Once the certification is complete, the teachers are certified to train nationwide.
“And it allows the students to work anywhere,” Howell said.
In addition to opportunities with Ingalls, “What we’ve found as we’ve set up these programs across the state is the students have open to them opportunities with local companies.” Howell said. “We made the curriculum broad enough so that it didn’t limit the student to just coming to work at Ingalls Shipbuilding,” said Howell.
He said many of the students have found employment in the oil and gas industries and some have even gone to work offshore. Howell asserted that the main benefit of programs like the one offered at the Capps Center is that the students now have access to opportunities that they may not have had before.
“We realistically don’t expect everybody to want to move to the coast, but we want to make the opportunity available to them if they choose to,” stated Howell. He said Saturday’s job fair event produced a steady stream of people, some that they were interested in and will continue conversations with plus they were able to steer quite a few people into the center’s pipefitter program.
In addition to the pipefitter candidates, some welders and designers showed up. “And we’re very excited about that,” Howell said. Ingalls employs 11,500 people with more than 850 different job titles. “So, we’re always looking at a variety of skill sets, we have designers and engineers. We have accountants; we have our own police force at the shipyard. We have our own fire department, we generate our own drinking water, so we have environmental engineers,” Howell said. He added that Ingalls has over 1,100 people in its engineering department alone.
Howell stated that those numbers will continue to rise because they are ramping up for a wave of new hires in the coming months, which is why they want to make sure they have a well trained workforce should they choose to come to Ingalls. “We’d just really like to encourage any of the local residents to take advantage, this is a fabulous facility.”
Howell applauded Mississippi’s community colleges and specifically MDCC and the Capps Center. “As far as being receptive and agile and meeting the needs of employers, they have really stepped up here to do that,” he said.
