A program that prepares its participants to be part of the workforce has evolved with one company to the point where students are producing structural steel components in the classroom to use in real building projects.

The relationship between Youngstown-based Flying HIGH Inc. and Livi Steel in Warren formed about five years ago. Now, it’s gotten to the point where some of those enrolled in the agency’s Professional Development Center for welding are fabricating parts at the center on Youngstown’s North Side.

The result — it sets them up for successful careers in the skilled trades by learning advanced welding techniques and creates a pipeline of skilled and reliable employees for the company. In fact, about 20 graduates of the program are already employed at Livi Steel.

“We bring our steel here and they will build it here, and they send us students who have finished their courses, have all their certificates,” Ashley Morrow, human resources manager for Livi Steel, said. “They come to us and we have hired them on.”

Getting to that point, she said, was always the goal.

“In the beginning, it was, I have the need for candidates, I need good employees, but that was the short-term aspect of it. The long-term was how do we help you, you help us, the back and forth,” she said.

“That was where it was like we need a pipeline of students becoming employees who can ultimately become students again to get upskilled who become better employees,” Morrow said.

Livi Steel is a family-owned manufacturer on Burton Street SE. The structural steel fabricated there is what would be called the skeleton of a new construction building.

It’s used in schools, warehouses, factories and medical facilities. About 33 people are employed at the facility.

The students in the program produce key structural steel components like columns, beams, angles and lintels. Also, they’re utilizing advanced welding methods such as flux-cored arc welding and shielded metal arc welding, both key techniques for structural steel fabrication, according to the development center.

Tim Hipkins, lead welding instructor at the development center, said the partnership with Livi is unique “in the way we use Livi’s OJT (on-the-job-training) and we produce what Livi wants, the processes they run in welding. We build off their prints.”

“That is unique for Livi,” he said, but all partnerships with the development center are, he said, in that it can tailor to the needs of the company.

Students, when they leave the accelerated program, do so with 3G welding certification, a qualification that applies across the industry. Some, too, are certified in blueprint reading.

Said Jeff Magada, founder and executive director of Flying HIGH Inc., “They are learning in a controlled environment, and we get to get the students to know who is best at doing it. That gives us the best way of identifying the best job candidates. And they are doing it while they are in training, so they are learning what the employer does.”

On a recent day at the development center, there was a roundtable that included four manufacturers and a representative of Lake to River Economic Development, the region’s new economic development agency.

The meetings, which typically involve no more than six companies, happen regularly. They allow Flying HIGH officials to “listen to the changing needs of their workforce and what their expectations are in job candidates, because that information drives our workforce development process,” Magada said. “We want to make sure we are training to their needs, giving them people with the skills they are looking for.”

Magada said the agency has placed more than 900 people into jobs since 2017. Furthermore, more than 500 skills credentials have been earned, he said.

“We are an integrated workforce development program that integrates job readiness and training with behavioral health services” that helps people to “become productive, taxpaying, self-sufficient individuals.”

The development center also offers health care training and GED programs. The longest of the programs is 15 weeks.