PCIA has won a $750,000 grant from the Department of Labor to establish standards for wireless training programs, and certifications to enable workers to meet those standards. The grant is part of the federal government’s broad initiative to fund job-specific training, a program which includes more than $5 million for wireless training programs.
“These training programs will prepare workers for jobs that are open right now,” said PCIA president and CEO Jonathan Adelstein. “I think we won the grant because it fits exactly with what the Administration is talking about.”
The PCIA grant is part of a $3.25 million grant awarded to Virginia State University to fund wireless training programs. The maximum amount that any one school could win under this federal program was $2.5 million, but the government also created a bonus program for schools that cooperated with industry associations. The additional $750,000 will be awarded over the next three years.
PCIA wants to work with other institutions in addition to Virginia State University. Aiken Technical College in South Carolina is already offering wireless training in partnership with Warriors 4 Wireless. Adelstein said that a partner school in the western part of the U.S. is a goal, and that PCIA will also develop online training and testing. In addition, some training will be offered in non-academic settings.
“It can be a training program that can be done in the field that isn’t an academic institution per se, but it will follow the PCIA textbook,” said Adelstein. “We’ll develop the curriculum and the standards and they will have to meet those. … We want to standardize the training so that we can professionalize the wireless workforce.”
Phil Larsen, PCIA’s director of education and training, will be a key part of PCIA’s new initiative. Larsen was director of operations at Nexius before joining PCIA.
“He actually knows how to deploy small cells, he knows how to work on towers,” said Adelstein. “But he also understands the broader range of how to create an educational program. Under the grant we have additional resources now to hire additional personnel and subject matter experts.”
The grant will also give PCIA resources to create a database that will track the training levels of individual workers, and will be accessible to employers through mobile devices.
“We’re going to make sure that it’s verifiable in the field,” said Adelstein, adding that PCIA will work closely with its industry partners to create both the database and the training programs. Those partners include all the major tower companies as well as leading carriers and infrastructure service providers.
Adelstein hopes that the database will be live within six months to a year. But he added that not many people will have the necessary training and certification within that time frame, and that PCIA wants to be sure that the new database does not create an unnecessary hurdle for people who are already qualified to work in the tower industry.
In addition to tower training, PCIA plans on establishing training programs for DAS, small cells, project management and site acquisition. Eventually, Adelstein would like to see a degree program in RF engineering.
“We want to take this all the way to more advanced training for people that want to be RF engineers,” he said. “So someone could have a whole career.”
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