S O L U T I O N S

In the Los Angeles area, stakeholders have been working in concert to serve the Space industry for many years. A collaborative approach was developed to meet employers' needs. Weekly convenings, outside of employer meetings, occur to ensure consistency and collaboration while attending to shared client needs. Providing seamless access to the workforce system, education partners, and apprenticeship resources is critical to success.

Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation(NGC) Machining and Electronics occupations were developed using a pre-apprenticeship to registered apprenticeship model with all partners named herein and using El Camino College as the US DOL Apprenticeship sponsor and pipeline for student talent. Through Space-Flex, this successfully demonstrated model is being duplicated for NGC Space for the functions responsible for maintaining their complex equipment, systems, and manufacturing environment. For NGC Space, the South Bay Workforce Investment Board(SBWIB) is the apprenticeship sponsor,  El Camino College is responsible for the student pipeline, and the support team will remain consistent.  By supporting NGC with two different apprenticeship sponsors, efficiencies have increased, which has allowed for better collaboration and support by this regional team. 
 

Many individuals on this team work nationally, and SBWIB is applying to the US DOL to move their standards to national standards so this team can continue to serve this employer, this industry, and this proven model on a national basis.
 

This closely aligned group of stakeholders also collaborates to apply for various foundation, local, regional, state, and federal grants supporting the Space-Flex mission. Regardless of eligibility, stakeholders come together to determine capacity and bandwidth, select the lead grantee, support the development of the grant applications, and perform industry outreach to strengthen the application and eventual grant performance.