pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

Last week, in concert with the first class of its first training course, PacTrans officially launch our Workforce Development Institute (WDI). The journey toward this milestone began four years ago when the PacTrans Board of Directors created an ongoing multi-institutional education project to explore and develop a program to support industry and agency partners combat growing workforce development and continuing education challenges.

Over the past four years PacTrans researchers have survey and interviewed hundreds of practitioners and managers of transportation companies and agencies to identify the gaps and needs in workforce development and continuing education. According to PacTrans Director, Professor Yinhai Wang, a report published by the Transportation Research Board predicts about 50% of the existing transportation workforce is likely to retire in 5-10 years and far fewer people are joining the industry than those retiring. Further the proliferation of big data and new technologies in the field require new skill sets that classically trained transportation engineers have not previously had.

PacTrans endeavors to find innovative ways to help our industry and agency partners address their workforce development and continuing educational needs. The training course that began last week was provided in partnership with the Washington State Department of Transportation. This first course, taught by Traffic Operations and Safety Engineer, Scott Kuznicki, was titled Understanding and Applying the MUTCD.

The WDI has several more courses in the works including human factors in transportation engineering, transportation data analysis & tools, project management, GIS for transportation, and pedestrian safety planning, design, and operations. If you or your company has training needs or ideas about new courses that will help transition our industry and workforce into the future, please do not hesitate to reach out.