Basic Engineering Common Core (BECC) at Surface Warfare Engineering School Command (SWESC) Great Lakes prepares Sailors with the basic skills needed to function in a shipboard engineering environment.

Future engineers begin with 15-days Engineering Professional Apprenticeship Career Track (E-PACT) course. Following the course, undesignated Fireman will transfer to the Fleet. Most will continue into a 14-day Basic Engineering Common Core Advanced (BECC Adv.) course where they will learn engineering principals and theory.

“The E-PACT and BECC Advanced courses were born from the need to streamline training for all apprentice surface Engineers,” said SWESC Great Lakes Commanding Officer Cmdr. Shawn Gibson. “They leverage many of the pillars associated with High Velocity Learning by targeting that knowledge and those skills necessary for our newest engineers to succeed during their first tour aboard a naval vessel.”

E-PACT provides instruction for basic knowledge and skills necessary to perform maintenance and combat casualties onboard ships. BECC Adv. provides complex training that better prepares students prior to their ‘A’ School.

SWESC Great Lakes’ uses a blended training model that utilizes interactive courseware training, instructor-led training, and hands-on application. Each type of training is meant to build upon each other. This allows students to put to practice what they have just learned. Students work through course modules to complete the training.

They also utilize the “crawl, walk, run” methodology of training. Starting at the crawl phase, trainees are introduced to programs of record (Tag-Out, 3-M, Heat Stress, etc.), and new techniques are introduced, taught, demonstrated, and executed. During the walk phase, students practice the new techniques under instructor guidance. The Run phase has them demonstrate the techniques with limited supervision.

E-PACT students complete modules 1, 2 and 3 (Core Programs, Engineering Basics and Damage Control-Wet Trainer), and BECC Adv. students complete modules 4, 6 and 7 (Damage Control-Firefighting Organization, Core-Propulsion and Core-Auxiliaries).

“It does not matter whether they are rated or undesignated, students are going to learn from the beginning about the basics in surviving in the engineering world,” said Machinist’s Mate 1st Class Donovan Jemison, BECC instructor at SWESC Great Lakes. “They are going to learn maintenance and material management, quality assurance, safety fundamentals; all of the things that every sailor out in the fleet needs to know. They are also going to learn about damage control; because at the heart of every engineer also is a firefighter.”

On average, Sailors will receive approximately 30 percent interactive courseware training, 20 percent instructor led, and 50 percent hands on training.

Interactive courseware training combines text information along with computer simulation scenarios that take students through tasks that are either performed regularly on a ship or requires performing virtual damage control tasks.

To enforce the interactive courseware training, students receive hands on training on engineering systems, basic tools and maintenance, and damage control to include the Damage Control Wet Trainer.

 “About half know how to use a hammer or pliers, but some of them have never seen these tools,” Jemison said. “So a lot of times we find that once they get into the lab and start using the tools it gives them more confidence and they are able to perform tasks more competently.”

Beginning modules focus on safety including classes familiarizing students with heat stress program, basic first aid, and Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation.

Continuing on, they learn how to tag-out equipment and utilize Engineering Operational Sequencing System (EOSS) and Planned Maintenance System (PMS) to align systems and conduct maintenance. Students are graded on procedural compliance to EOSS and local operating procedures.

“One of the biggest things we want to get across to the students is procedural compliance,” said Engineman 1st Class John Moultrie, BECC instructor at SWESC Great Lakes. “That is what our curriculum is built to drive. We know we will be sending a student to the fleet that can perform maintenance on equipment on any class ship. But they will understand the process of following an EOSS and a Maintenance Requirement Card (MRC).”

As the class progresses, so does the complexity of the training.  Most of the training builds upon what was taught in previous class modules and moving from interactive courseware training to hands-on training.

Labs are held where students spend time learning damage control systems and maintenance on watertight closures, dewatering procedures, hose handling, patching and plugging and damage investigation.

Students also receive hands-on training on tools, flange shield, valve repair, bearings, couplings, steering gears, AC/R, conveyors, potable water system and distilling units, hydraulics, anchor windlass, HP/LP air, oil water separator, pumps, educator operation, heat exchangers, gears, main shafting, auxiliary machinery cooling water, piping, tubes, and fittings.

A series of increasingly complex laboratories culminates in using everything they have learned to perform the final task of performing maintenance on a running lube oil purifier and duplex strainer to include tag-out, correct use of personal protective equipment while following a MRC.

“Through building upon what the students have already learned we are able break down the maintenance into a number of procedures,” said Engineman 1st Class John Moultrie, BECC instructor at SWESC Great Lakes. “By breaking the course down that way, we ensure that students become proficient with those procedures before proceeding on. At the conclusion of the class we have them apply the procedures they have learned to complete the final task. Those procedures that they have learned can apply to any piece of equipment they will come across in the Fleet.”

Students are held to a standard of at least 95 percent accuracy. They are expected to complete laboratories with zero safety violations and with no more than two procedural violations.

“Through a combination of experienced Instructors, the infusion of advanced training technologies, the opportunity to practice skills through high fidelity simulation, and finally hands-on experience and evaluation, we ground the next generation of naval engineers in Sound Shipboard Operating Principles,” Gibson said. “Every Sailor that graduates BECC leaves with a solid understanding of the requirement for verbatim procedural compliance, a questioning attitude, and the integrity to speak up when things don’t look right.”

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