About the NTC

Through the NTC, the Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) performs the mission-critical support function of developing, maintaining, and delivering standardized health, safety, safeguards, security, and protective force training for DOE and NNSA Federal and contractor employees. The mission of the NTC, as a direct report organizational element of EA, is to provide and facilitate quality training for Federal and contractor personnel in support of DOE’s mission.

The NTC’s leadership ensures that its training programs promote a technically capable, security- and safety-oriented DOE workforce by developing courses based on current methods, orders, and directives. When policy changes, NTC training focuses on communicating the reasoning behind the changes.

One priority of the NTC is to develop training on issues that challenge students to make difficult decisions and take specific courses of action. For example, Safety Training courses incorporate complex, DOE-specific case studies, encouraging the sharing of ideas and experience among students. This experientially based training, together with instruction by recognized subject matter experts, supports student learning and retention and encourages active contribution both in the classroom and at the workplace. Such training reinforces analysis-based learning objectives to ensure that students are able to achieve DOE’s technical qualification standards and functional area qualification standards.

The NTC recognizes that quality training programs are essential to support the protection of critical Departmental assets, national security, and the environment, as well as the health and safety of the workforce and the public. By providing value-added support through its Site Certification and Training Approval Programs, the NTC enables sites to deliver NTC and site-based training programs necessary to support optimal site performance.

A second goal is to ensure that the greatest number of students are served at the lowest cost. To this end, a variety of training delivery methods are available to both Federal and contractor employees. These include classroom-based training, site-specific applied practice and performance-based field training, eLearning, and blended learning (a combination of training delivery methods). Classroom-based training at the NTC is enhanced by a variety of new technologies, including smart whiteboards that enable touch-screen interaction with network resources, thin client technology that allows hands-on student involvement, and remote videoconferencing that facilitates off-site participation.

The NTC’s Learning Management System (LMS) is the central location for access to all NTC training. Student enrollment for classroom-based courses is managed through the LMS, and Web-based training, such as eLearning and interactive distance learning programs, are available to DOE Federal and contractor employees through the LMS. (Note that Federal employees must first obtain authorization for training using DOE’s CHRIS system.) Web-based training is typically used for DOE-wide instruction such as security awareness, protection of classified material, sexual harassment and diversity awareness, and government ethics training, and can also be used to administer required site-specific training.

Finally, the NTC is collaborating with other Federal entitites to establish a safety training clearinghouse that takes advantage of existing training delivered by DOE sites, vendors, and academia.