The Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee of the Northwest Line Construction Industry, a nonprofit organization that trains apprentices from all over the country, is hoping to break ground on a new training center in Battle Ground next year.
The organization, which is under the oversight of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the National Electrical Contractors Association Trustees, has purchased property at 1705 SE 17th St. in Battle Ground for $1 million. Officials are in the process of working with an architect to design and build a new training center, JATC director Mike Kiessling said.
The training organization will move its operations from the Camp Rilea Military Reservation in Warrenton, Ore., once the 10-acre training center in Battle Ground opens. Kiessling is hoping to open the new training center by fall 2016.
The new location will put the training center in the middle of its busiest area for work. The center’s jurisdiction includes Oregon, Washington and parts of northern California and Idaho. “It just makes sense to have our training center in the state of Washington,” Kiessling said.
David Jones, chairman of the committee that oversees JATC, said the Battle Ground site is ideally located for the center’s clients. “The most important thing is to get ourselves in the I-5 corridor,” he said. The oversight committee is made up of four representatives from IBE and NECA, and is in charge of determining financing for projects like the training facility.
Jones said officials are in the process of determining the cost of the project and how it will be financed. He said those issues will go before the committee for approval. “It’s taken us a long time to get to this point to have our own building,” Jones said. “It’s been a long time coming.”
The 7,000 hour program trains apprentices in the aspects of the outside line construction industry with both on-the-job and classroom training. Apprentices come from all over the country but are required to work in the Pacific Northwest jurisdiction for three and a half years once they become an apprentice, Kiessling said. After that, many apprentices go on to work for the local utility companies but some will take jobs elsewhere, Kiessling said.
The new training center will include about 6,000 square feet of office space, as well as 20,000 square feet of classroom space, in addition to the training yards on its 10 acres, Kiessling said.
The organization is currently training 325 apprentices, and an additional 110 utility apprentices. Classes are held in various locations including Seattle, Spokane, and Pasco in Washington and Springfield and Central Point in Oregon.
Kiessling said the goal is to create a more modern center with improved technology and up-to-date features. But even with the advent of new technology, apprentices are still trained on traditional skills, such as setting poles by hand. “We tend to teach them a lot of the old school ways of doing it,” he said, noting apprentices need to be prepared for anything.
The new center will include all aspects of the JATC training: hands-on and classroom training for utility and tree-trimming apprentices; and the Vocational Outside Line Training Academy that started in 2005. VOLTA is a pre-apprenticeship program in the outside electrical industry. The program focuses on skills needed for electrical linemen, power line clearance tree trimmers and related and ancillary workers.
Those classes include 10-week sessions that begin in April, July and October, with a maximum enrollment of 32. In January through April, the training center offers sessions for line and utility apprentices in 10-day sessions, with a maximum of 62 people per 10-day session, JATC officials said.
The organization also offers training courses such as first aid/CPR, flagging traffic control, pesticide certification and crane certification.
