Northern Industrial Training

6 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 11 Sending people on-site to conduct mock safety audits with a certified safety professional, to identify shortcomings is another available service, and it is always followed up with a proposed solution. “Alyeska pipeline company which operates the Trans-Alaska Pipeline outsourced for nine years their training administrative department to us. So, if you needed training somewhere within the 800- mile pipeline, we were the ones that vetted whether it really needed to happen, and then found the expert to do it,” he reports. On the subject of valuable relationships, Crum acknowledges, “The people that we depend on the most for a huge segment of the students that we get in are corporations that are paying for their employees to come. So, when we’re talking about the day-to-day, their impact cannot be understated.” Some of these corporations include Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC), Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC), The Associated Village Council Presidents (AVCP), and Tlingit Haida. On the vendor side, he mentions the local NAPA stores (operated by Alaskan Auto Inc.) as an integral supplier, who not only provides many of the products needed for the training but also keeps the prices as low as possible. NIT also relies on vendor partnerships with Central Welding Supply, Shoreside Petroleum, and Granger. As well, Crum mentions the importance of the employers, who really are the final step in the process. “Big employer partners include CarlileTransportation Systems, Weaver Brothers Inc, American Fast Freight, Delta Constructors, local business, American Fast Freight, it just goes across the board,” he says. While Alaska continues to navigate employee attraction and retention challenges, Crum conveys, “Culture within the workforce has always mattered, but in a workforce shortage situation, NORTHERN INDUSTR IAL TRAINING, ALASKA