I spent three years as a department manager with Bell Helicopter International in Iran. This program to train mechanics and pilots for the Imperial Iranian Army Aviation was very poorly run and never met with any manner of success. It sounds very similar to the Bwos management you guys speak of in your posts. For the unknowledgeable on the forum what does Bwos stand for?
In the case of our program it was based on a report prepared by a US Army Colonel who spent several weeks in Iran. He saw young boys working next to their fathers in the bazaars forming metal into very beautiful plates and serving trays and from that he deduced that Iranian men and boys had an inherent mechanical ability and could be easily trained as mechanics. It was his recommendation that with eight weeks of English training the young men could be streamed into the schools for the various mechanical and electrical skills. The training would consist of eight weeks of basic mechanic training (How to use tools) and ten weeks of skills training and with that they would be turned loose on a helicopter.
The top management was drawn from the military retired ranks starting with the president (retired general) to division managers (retired colonels) and none of them had any experience in management of a turnkey training program. They tried to run it as if everybody (civilians) was in the US Army. They set up the training syllabi as if they were training American boys (who mostly do have good mechanical skills).
The English training was expanded to forty-two weeks and the instructors instead of teaching English as a second language spent most of their time teaching the nomenclature of helicopter components. When the student arrived at the training school they had minimal English skills and the technical instructors had to teach English.
The pilot training was equally as screwed up and that is a story unto itself. One other strange thing. Most of the mechanics were high school graduates and the pilots were not.
