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FERRY TRAINING • Sustainment of the program – this necessitated strate- der the expectation that success has the potential to make gic thinking and effective management that gave careful additional resources available, if desired, at a later time.

consideration to resource requirements, the SEA process, Documented processes were critical in order to ensure and objective performance measures. that the vision and fundamental tenets of SEA were sus- tained throughout the project. To develop the processes,

Program Sustainment key stakeholders were engaged from the employee base,

Initially, the resources dedicated to the project consisted crewing of? ces, employee relations and the SEA core team. of two in management of design and development and one A SEA training process map was created to show the work- in LMS development (hosting and IT support). There was ? ows across the company to create awareness, ensure co- also one internal director-level person focusing about one- herence and support sustainment. third of his time to ownership, leadership and part-time re- Documented measures of performance were critical to sourcing of the team. Completing the team was the cadre of sustainment: if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. operational employees who participated in working groups The LMS needed to provide training metrics, ranging and on-site population of learning templates with site, ves- from exam performance at the individual question to roll- sel, and route-speci? c training information. As the program up reports on programs and ranks of employees. moved up the inaugural department (deck) and across the other three departments (terminals, engineering, catering), Recommendations to Industry the number of part-time trainers grew. Additionally, as the Any company considering the transition to a standard- number of programs increased, departmental dedicated ex- ized, LMS-enabled training program ignores the experience pertise and leadership was required, so a SEA manager per of early maritime adopters at its own peril. The experience of department was hired from within our employee base. each company will differ, but there will be many similarities.

It is important to note that while proper staf? ng is im- Regardless of the organization, a key recommendation is portant, training can be improved using any level of staf? ng careful consideration of engagement and inclusion. These with the understanding that speed of progress will match two levers will help ensure clarity on the impetus (why), the level of resources applied. There is no harm in the idea the operational requirements (what), the resources, strat- of beginning conservatively and with limited resources un- egy, change management and executive support (how):

January 2016

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