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Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense Company

The Company

Testimonial

"I told my Account Manager that when we purchased PureSafety, we knew it was good. But now that our employees have used it a while, we've found it’s even better than we originally thought."

Norm August
Manager of Safety and Regulatory Compliance

Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense Company (EBA&D) is the global leader in energetic systems used in minefield and obstacle breaching, military demolition, vehicle protection, tactical weapons, and space & strategic systems. EBA&D prides itself in understanding a mission's objectives and working tirelessly toward a solution. With a wide variety of energetic technologies and the engineering and manufacturing capabilities to deliver on time, EBA&D gives customers more than history to rely on. EBA&D has been providing energetics innovation for over a century and currently employs approximately 300 people in its Simsbury, Connecticut and Graham, Kentucky facilities.

The Situation

Because EBA&D works in both the Aerospace and Defense industries, the company has many federal regulatory training requirements, including OSHA, DOT, EPA, as well as state safety training requirements. Prior to PureSafety, in order to provide employees with the necessary safety training, EBA&D used standard classroom training with outside subject matter experts (SMEs) and occasional videos. These SMEs were responsible for teaching approximately 50 topics. While the SMEs were knowledgeable in their field and did a good job, the classroom training methodology had many problems:
  • Providing safety training often meant shutting down entire departments – thus production was heavily affected on training days.
  • Scheduling workers was a nightmare and make-up classes were a constant problem due to illness, vacation and other factors.
  • Scheduling the SMEs was often difficult. And, it was very expensive to schedule SMEs to come in for a make-up class and teach one subject to one or two employees.
  • Tracking who had completed the required training was a manual effort and not entirely reliable since it was completely dependent on a sign-up sheet.
EBA&D has long had an excellent safety record and is an ISO Certified Company. As such, the company has more than 60 procedures that provide important information on the processes that the company uses to ensure quality, internal communication, project documentation and many other work policies. Every employee is expected to get training on the procedures that pertain to their job. Unfortunately, scheduling employees for this training was just as difficult as scheduling their safety training.

Norm August, Manager of Safety and Regulatory Compliance and his team realized that a new approach to training was necessary. They identified three major areas that needed to be addressed by the new training methodology:

1. Training should be as flexible as possible.
Individual employees should be able to take the training when their schedule permits. Group training should only be done when the subject matter warrants it.

2. Excellent documentation must be part of the program.
The company needed documentation of all aspects of safety training, including scheduling, testing, completion and reporting.

3. There must be verification that the course material was understood.
Norm and his team realized that employees would be safer only if the information was understood and retained. A means of testing the trainees was absolutely necessary.

The Solution

Norm had previously been exposed to online training and decided it was time to seriously evaluate this alternative. He and his team initially talked to five online vendors but then quickly narrowed it to three. When the three companies were invited to do a demonstration, PureSafety was "head and shoulders" above the others. The PureSafety courses were described as "clean" and extremely intuitive from a usage standpoint. In addition, PureSafety had the most comprehensive course library and thus was able to address the required safety, transportation environmental, and human resources topics.

EBA&D implemented PureSafety online training in June, 2006 after a ramp-up period of only one month. PureSafety was able to quickly duplicate the company’s hierarchy and then assign and schedule the appropriate safety, transportation and environmental courses to all EBA&D employees.

In addition to the required standard safety courses, 67 PowerPoint presentations were created for the ISO training and then easily uploaded by Norm and his team onto the PureSafety Learning Management System (LMS). Tests were created in PureSafety for each procedure. As with the other training, the presentations were quickly assigned to employees as appropriate, allowing them to easily learn about the company’s vital processes when they had the time. It also allowed the training team to know who had (or had not) viewed the presentations.

The Results

Norm and the Training Team immediately found the PureSafety system to be extremely easy to use and the administrative functions were excellent. The general feeling was that “PureSafety thought of everything.” Norm and his safety team and company management are thrilled with the results and how PureSafety solved their many training problems:
  • Production is no longer shut down so employees can receive safety training. In fact, whenever there is a break in production, employees are often sent to do their safety training. Thus, the time is put to good use.
  • Employees love the flexibility. Most take their assignments in the company-provided computer lab, which has four computers, all dedicated to PureSafety. However, some elect to take their training at home – all they need is an internet connection.
  • The PureSafety system solved all of their scheduling, tracking and reporting needs. As soon as a trainee completes an assignment, it is automatically documented. Plus, it is easy to find out who has not taken their safety training and take action.
  • The ISO Certification presentations can be viewed when it fits employee’s schedules. Plus, since these presentations are loaded into PureSafety, they can be scheduled, tracked and reported with ease.
Overall, choosing PureSafety has proven to be an excellent decision. In fact, in November of 2006, the ISO Auditors visited the EBA&D facilities. They were extremely impressed with the PureSafety online training. One auditor made the remark that before too long, all companies would be providing training in this way.