Why not write what you've done and submit it to the Welding Journal for publication?  How cool would that be to see your final report published in the worlds premier welding magazine?  If you need some advice or contacts within AWS I can help as I'm sure several others who are published authors might.

Southpaw,

I do think there would be an ongoing interest in the findings of your report for a number of reasons.

Most community and technical colleges provide entry level skills via 1 year diploma programs. Some also offer 2 year associate programs that better prepare students to be decision makers or put them on the road to engineering, management or inspection. What the schools can rarely do is meet every individual training or proficiency requirement of the industry in their region, there is just too much specialization. The higher levels of competency needed in today's manufacturing environment makes it necessary for some operations to create their own training programs. ISO 900X requirements may also drive a need for more structured recurrent employee training.

In my region, Manitowoc Crane, Bucyrus international and P&H are examples of employers that have extensive in-house training facilities and programs because of the shortage of highly skilled welders in the region/nationally. Some of the tech colleges  nearby do try to incorperate some of the things they specialize in such as large Dia. FCAW into our entry level training but its just not possible to get them totally ready for that kind of work in the time frame we currently have, although specialty "boot camps" are being delivered with a more specialized focus.

In the mid 1990s I developed an in house welder training program for United Airlines that met ISO 9001 requirements. We installed a dedicated training facility and a curriculum that was aimed to standardize our training that had in many cases been informal OJT with no real consistent or measurable outcomes. Often the quality of the training was the highest, but it still missed an auditable component.  In order to meet the needs of UAL and ISO as well as not wasting the time of some of the best welders in the world in needless training, we had to devise a plan that provided students with all the latest technology and technique, reinforce safety, give practical help to those who needed it while at the same time getting top performers back on the shop floor without taking up too much production time.

We also served to update alloy specific training for individuals who were bidding from one area to another. (Lots of different alloys as you might imagine)

We adopted an accountability format loosely based on the AWS SENSE (EG1, EG2 & EG3) models along with influence from MIL-STD 1595 and the soon to be published AWS D17.1 along with our own in house Standard practice manuals and those of GE, Pratt and CFMI.

Our training center was also targeted to serve new hires that may have tremendous GTAW skills but had never worked on very thin materials. A week or two in the training center and they could step out on the shop floor and work on very expensive equipment with little worry of scrappage. It was also a good place for welders to try out new equipment like hybrid power supplies, work with craftsmen from different departments and pick up tricks and also it was a safe place for some of our veterans to discover magnifier lenses and other ways to cheat age.

Along with the others in the forum I would encourage to approach the journal with your work. This is exactly the kind of stuff many journal readers pay their money to  get. If your work does get published it will also serve as a justification tool for others who find themselves in the same boat you were in, trying to get management to invest in in-house training. The reason I'm confident that the journal would be interested is because they were interested in what we did at UAL. They published several articles mentioning our program.. I can only find one article that gives a brief mention of the training center in 2004, a year after I left the company, the other must be so long ago that the search function won't pick it up. http://www.aws.org/w/s/wj/2004/08/028/index.html

Keep us posted and ask all the questions that come to mind, you might even contact the folks at the Journal as you begin to recieve your data so they can also encourage you and maybe even offer advice and proofing....

As an aside,  becomming a member of both your college welding department's advisory committee and your local AWS section might be a good idea. Being on your colleges advisory committee can help them to offer more relevant training that will help entry welders that graduate from that program make a smoother transition into the workforce not to mention your own companys program. AWS Section meetings are a great place for employers to meet and headhunt ambitious college students. Our section meetings are well attended by tech college students from at least 6 different programs. The cream rises to the top and this is a great method to get to meet top talent.