“Team Danville”, with SPECTRUM, Wins $1.78M DoD Workforce Development Contract

Danville, Virginia – “Team Danville”, a public-private consortium led by the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR) and including Danville Community College (DCC), Phillips Corporation, and The SPECTRUM Group, has won a $1.78M contract for a workforce development pilot project.

The pilot project, Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing (ATDM), is a new and innovative training program for skilled workers in the defense industrial base (DIB). ATDM is designed to address skill gaps and manpower shortages in the DIB. Through the ATDM program, workers will be trained in CNC machining, welding, metrology, quality assurance, and additive manufacturing. This multi-year award will evaluate a version of ATDM customized for naval shipbuilding skills, a leading defense sector in Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic region.

This ADTM pilot project supports the mission of the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) program. It is one of the first projects funded in support of the National Imperative for Industrial Skills (NIIS) Initiative, which was launched by IBAS in March 2020 under the DoD’s Cornerstone OTA.

As part of the announcement of the award, Senator Mark Warner visited IALR facilities and met with leaders from both the partnership and the Danville community. “We’ve got to make sure we’ve got the workforce we need,” Warner said. “It takes the kind of training that the [Danville Community] College and the Institute [for Advanced Learning and Research] are providing.”

Read more on the announcement and Senator Warner’s visit from the Danville Register & Bee here.