EDSI Launches $2.1M Workforce Training Initiative for Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
Educational Data Systems, Inc. (EDSI) was selected through a competitive bid process by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) to conduct a $2.1M, year-long project to analyze, update, and deliver training that will impact up to 10,000 MBTA employees and contractors. The multi-phase project is in response to a Federal Transit Administration (FTA) request that the agency modernize their employee training programs to ensure they maintain a highly skilled and informed workforce that provides safe and efficient transportation services throughout eastern Massachusetts and parts of Rhode Island.
EDSI, which began work on the project in April, will complete tasks in three phases: 1) Performing a detailed analysis of MBTA’s current training curriculum, matching it against current job and safety requirements to determine courses that need to be updated; 2) Preparing a technical career path analysis to foster retention and promotion of entry-level employees to the executive level; and 3) Developing and delivering new training content.
The first major milestone was updating Right of Way (ROW) training to reinforce safety procedures for employees and contractors working around train tracks. EDSI helped MBTA develop and deliver new training to employees and contractors in response to the FTA’s requests. Future EDSI deliverables will help formalize and standardize On-the-Job Training policies and integrate emergency response procedures. This project will help develop a highly skilled, responsive, and engaged workforce that boosts MBTA’s reputation as a great place to work.
EDSI’s Innovative Learning Solutions Manager, Michael Lang, notes, “this is an ambitious project, and it speaks to EDSI’s long history of supporting the public transit industry and our core strengths of curriculum development, customized training, and talent solutions. I’m looking forward to partnering with MBTA’s training professionals to implement cutting-edge instructional design and learning technologies on such a wide scale.”
EDSI is a workforce development service provider and consulting company based in Dearborn, Michigan, that has helped great companies train and retain great people since 1979. Having worked in the public transportation sector for more than 25 years, EDSI previously worked with MBTA on a rail vehicle maintenance initiative as part of the American Public Transportation Association’s training standards program, which is funded in part by the FTA.
For more information contact:
Kenneth Mall, EDSI Managing Director
248-705-5068
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