COMPANY
The U.S. Army CCDC Armaments Center (formerly ARDEC) is the US Army’s primary research and development arm for armament and munitions systems.
INDUSTRY
Government and Military
SIZE
There is no other comprehensive armaments facility like it in the country. Picatinny Arsenal is a one-of-a-kind facility that provides virtually all of the lethal mechanisms used in Army weapon systems and other military services. The Arsenal’s mission is to support Army transformation goals. In an effort to streamline the acquisition process and deliver the armaments that soldiers need for safety efficiently and economically, Picatinny Arsenal has established increasingly close partnerships with universities and industry partners, involving them in collaborative efforts early in the research and development process.
PROBLEM
CCDC employees are primarily engineers and scientists, as well as administrative personnel who support armament research, development, and testing. The research, testing, and production cycle is long, very cross-functional, and requires meticulous documentation and reporting. Accurate and clear documentation along the entire research and production cycle is literally a matter of life and death.
CCDC wanted an ongoing, in-depth onsite training program that would enable employees to write very complex information clearly, that migrated to virtual instructor-led instruction, in a way that both technical and non-technical audiences could understand. Employee writing needed to match the U.S. Army's ethos of excellence.
SOLUTION
At Picatinny Arsenal, engineers, scientists, and support staff document complex work throughout the armament research, testing, and production cycle. Instructional Solutions developed an ongoing, in-depth training program to help employees explain that work accurately and clearly to both technical and nontechnical readers. Initially delivered onsite, the program later moved to virtual instructor-led training. This critical area of the U.S. Army has trusted Instructional Solutions to support employee writing training since 2010.
Instructional Solutions developed a customized business writing workshop for CCDC employees. Offered three times a year on an opt-in basis, the program combines business and technical writing instruction with practice using the documents employees write in their work.
The training helps participants:
- Explain complex technical information to nontechnical readers
- Organize and sequence information clearly
- Write in a professional, appropriate tone
- Remove unnecessary words and detail
Participants learn a practical writing process, including how to map information before drafting, write more efficiently and accurately, develop clear executive summaries, use persuasive techniques when appropriate, and identify and correct sentence-level errors. They apply these skills to emails, reports, memos, and other CCDC documents.
The course included instruction, group and individual exercises, writing and feedback opportunities, job aids, and review of actual documents.
EVALUATION HIGHLIGHTS
On a scale of one to five, with one ranked as “low” and five ranked as “high,” the summary scores were:
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Overall: Course was a worthwhile investment of my time & my organization’s training dollars = 4.8
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This course should be included in future Training Schedules = 4.9
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I would recommend this course to my professional colleagues = 4.9
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The instructor seemed prepared, organized for the course = 4.9
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The instructor had a command of the subject material = 5.0