Industry-driven, targeted training intended to help the Alabama Community College System (ACCS) address a projected need for nearly 5,000 skilled workers across southwest Alabama during the next 12 months lies at the heart of plans unveiled recently for a Workforce Training Facility in Mobile.

Chancellor Mark Heinrich announced the system’s plans to construct a 25,000-square-foot advanced manufacturing training facility on the campus of Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley, citing the need to “reinvent” postsecondary training that has not kept pace as workforce needs have shifted in recent decades.

Heinrich said 60 percent of Alabama’s labor pool falls into what he calls the high-wage, middle-skill bracket – meaning they pull down between $40,000 and $80,000 annually. Yet, only about 47 percent of current workforce demand exhibited by employers is being met.

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“These are the jobs that Airbus, Austal and many (other) businesses in the area are demanding,” Heinrich said. The proposed advanced manufacturing training facility is “designed to address the overwhelming needs for the middle-skill, high-wage worker.”

Heinrich’s comments came during the Community Foundation of South Alabama’s 2016 annual luncheon, marking one year since the foundation set its sights on facilitating the project’s development.

Chancellor Mark Heinrich: “These are the jobs that Airbus, Austal and many (other) businesses in the area are demanding.”

“In 2015, we launched our Workforce Training Initiative to serve as a catalyst to bring together the necessary partners to address the region’s need for an advanced manufacturing facility,” said Rebecca Byrne, president and chief executive officer of the foundation.

Byrne said those efforts translated to a $50,000 grant to help the ACCS jumpstart planning for the facility, pegged to cost somewhere between $2 million and $4 million.

Since its founding in 1976, the Mobile-based foundation has awarded more than $75 million in grants to nonprofit organizations across an eight-county region and specializes in the creation of endowments.

“Our foundation is built on the idea of creating a long-lasting, far-reaching impact,” Byrne said. “The Workforce Training Initiative illustrates what the power of harnessing resources and working toward a common goal for the community can do. The effects of this facility will be felt among our region for decades to come.”

Heinrich said construction on the Workforce Training Facility is slated to begin “within months,” but he declined to provide a timeline for completion beyond the expectation that classes could begin as soon as spring 2017.

“This is not a duplication. … Rather, it’s a recognition of and commitment to filling these high-skill, high-wage jobs,” he said.

Roger Wehner, executive director of the Mobile Airport Authority, said the training facility is slated for an area of the Brookley campus known as the Gallery on the eastern side of the Alabama Aerospace Innovation Research Center.

Partners in the collaborative effort includes AIDT, the Alabama Technology Network, Bishop State Community College and Faulkner State Community College.

Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson told the crowd manufacturing activity in the Mobile community has increased 31 percent since 2009, gains he called “a huge accomplishment” considering the region’s ability to diversify to include everything from chemicals and steel to shipbuilding and aerospace.

“The main challenge we face is that we provide a skilled workforce for both the present companies and those that are going to come,” Stimpson said, calling the breadth of the community college system’s commitment to this project “an inspiration.”