This RFP seeks to solicit proposals from qualified organizations to deliver the Short Course Training and Employment Centre from Edmonton for eligible Albertans throughout the Alberta North Region
The Short Course Training and Employment Centre (the Centre) is a Transition to Employment Services (TES) initiative distinguished by the central role it gives to occupation-targeted training and certification. In most TES programming, Short Course training is a supplementary support, drawn on occasionally to remove a specific barrier; at the Centre, it is the core of the model. Therefore, the Centre will exist to skill-up Participants and prepare them for a specific occupation by equipping them with the full bundle of certifications, tickets, and short-term training that the field requires, within funding and duration maximums set out in program guidelines. To that end, it makes full and deliberate use of the Short Course training funding available under TES, applying it to its intended purpose and at the scale it was designed for.
The Training and Employment Services Branch within Alberta Jobs, Economy, Trade and Immigration will utilize Transition to Employment Services (TES) and Workplace Training (WT) program authorities and guidelines to deliver the Short Course Training and Employment Centre as a specialized training-to-employment service for unemployed and underemployed Albertans.
In practice, the provider operates the Centre much like a training service: it maintains a distinct catalogue of occupations a Participant can train toward, each mapped to a pre-determined bundle of certifications, tickets, and short-term training that employers require, and enrols Participants into the pathway that matches their employment goal. The bundled training is delivered alongside the assessment, job search, placement, and ninety-day follow-up supports provided through TES and may also include Paid Work Experience (PWE), a short-term, cost-recovery wage subsidy adapted from the branch's WT program to help Participants bridge into employment in the occupation for which they have trained. PWE is the only Workplace Training component drawn into this model. The program is delivered as a full TES service with optional PWE where suitable; it is not a full WT program and is not subject to WT's wider administrative requirements.
What sets the Centre apart is not that it combines employment supports with short-course training, which TES already does, but that it maximizes Short Course training in the service model and structures delivery around achieving occupation-specific employment outcomes.
