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Client: Canadian Army's Land Force Doctrine and Training System

Case Study: Training Rationalization Study

Client Profile

The Canadian Army’s Land Force Doctrine and Training System is responsible for all military training and education of Canadian Army personnel. The mandate of the formation is to teach Army personnel all of the skills that they need to survive and operate on the modern battlefield. This includes everything from basic soldier skills, to leadership and command, operation of advanced weapons systems, the law of armed conflict, and advanced strategy and tactics. Every year, thousands of soldiers are trained in a variety of schools and within field units. At the time of this project (2003-04), annual throughput was over 300,000 student-days, with over 60,000 instructor-days in support.

Business Challenge

High technology equipment and weapons systems have grown progressively more complex, as have the requirements of fighting in the global war on terror and pacifying extremely volatile areas such as Bosnia, Somalia, and Afghanistan. As a result, Army training had grown considerably in duration and variety over the years, adding to the total numbers of courses, their duration and the total number of students. In parallel with this, the high pace of combat and peacekeeping operations was putting considerable strain on field units and the principal body of instructors, senior NCOs. Something had to be done or the Canadian Army would either grind to a halt from over-training, or send increasing numbers of soldiers into operations without adequate training. The Chief of the Land Staff directed that Army training and education programs be reviewed and rationalized by up to 50 percent.

Solution

As a staff officer working in the Directorate of Army Training, Richard Martin was put in charge of this critically important project. He led a team of professional officers and NCOs in the detailed analysis of all Army training and made recommendations to senior Army leadership, culminating in a written report to the Chief of the Land Staff.

The key challenge was to ensure that, if training was to be reduced or eliminated, it had to be done in a rational and defensible manner. A simple across the board cut would not do, as many courses are much more important than others, both in terms of training audience and the potential impact of cutting the training being offered. In order to ensure that only “low impact” training would be reduced, Richard Martin developed a neutral measure for the relative weighting of each course offered in the Canadian Army: Each course would be measured in terms of its student-day impact on total Army course throughput. For instance, a 30-day course offered to 1000 students has a bigger systemic impact in terms of resources than does a 50-day course offered to only 20 students, even though the latter one is longer. Courses with large throughputs tend to be at the entry level, whereas courses with smaller throughputs tend to be more advanced and aimed at educating officers and senior NCOs. Consequently, it is much less risky to make a small reduction to the duration or training audience for a low-level course as it is to reduce or eliminate an advanced course. Moreover, any reduction of trainee quality can be easily made up over time through experience and just-in-time training.

Because Richard Martin had developed this neutral measure of training throughput and resource impact, the project team was able to make targeted recommendations for cuts to specific entry level courses, rather than an across the board reduction in all types of training. This took most of the emotion out of the decision and gave a number of rational options to the Army leadership.

As a result of this analysis and these recommendations, the Canadian Land Force Doctrine and Training System was able to identify recurring savings of well over $ 1 million per year as well as a 25 % reduction in total human resources input and total student-days, all while maintaining the quality of training and education in the Canadian Army.

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