A team from the Saudi Aramco Partnership Department visited the Technical Trainers College (TTC), Riyadh to forge a training partnership relation for possible benefits of services.

Welcoming the guests, academic vice dean Martin Tonko and TTC department’s head Mohamed Al-Omran made a short presentation on TTC leading to a constructive discussion about the possibilities for future cooperation.

Tonko informed on Sunday that Abdelgayoum Elnour, career counselor and Ahmed Al-Mulayhy, Industrial skills trainer, represented Saudi Aramco.

Aramco, the national oil and natural gas company, is currently operating ten training centers in the Kingdom and has done most of the training by itself but now plans to tap into resources provided by the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation’s (TVTC) system of colleges of technology and colleges of excellence.

“We are looking for a better training methodology with short courses that run parallel to the education of our trainers,” said Elnour. Aramco officials also expressed interest in the provision of cutting-edge teacher training on the ground in Riyadh.

According to Tonko, so far, trainers have received their pedagogical education over the course of a six-month program in the United Kingdom. Commenting on the TTC program Tonko said, “We offer tailor-made training courses according to the needs of our customers.”

He added that further areas of cooperation that were discussed were company field practice (CFP) as well as the sponsoring of student’s projects that have relevance to Saudi Aramco. Following the discussion, the visitors were given a guided tour through workshops and laboratories, he informed.

He added that both Saudi Aramco and TTC agreed to follow-up on the partnership idea and continue more detailed talks at the next gathering.

TTC, a project by the ‘Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), is the first of its kind in the Kingdom, which is keen to improve its system of technical and vocational education to streamline the local labor market.