The US Department of Labor's OSHA has announced that it is seeking applications for two types of training grants, with funds to be awarded totalling $1.2 million. The two types of grants available are Targeted Topic Training and Targeted Topic Training and Educational Materials Development.

OSHA has outlined the following topics for the grants: fall protection, grain handling operations, crane safety, workplace violence, hazard communication for chemical exposure, injury and illness prevention programs, and shipyard safety hazards. Under the Susan Harword Training Grants Program, the focus of these grants is to provide workers and employers with the tools and resources necessary to understand workplace hazards, control measures, and rights and responsibilities.

The grant was named in honour of the late Susan Harwood, a former director of the Office of Risk Assessment in OSHA's Health standards directorate, who died in 1996. During her 17-year tenure with the agency, Harwood developed OSHA standards to protect workers exposed to bloodborne pathogens, cotton dust, benzene, formaldehyde, asbestos and lead in construction.

The following are recognized as eligible applicants for the Susan Harwood Training Grants:

• Non-profit, community, and faith-based organizations
• Employer associations
• Labour unions
• Joint labour/management associations
• Colleges and universities

These grants will come with a one year term focused on creating sustainable training programs and materials for those selected. Agencies of state and local governments will not be eligible but instiutions of higher education supported by state and local government can apply in accordance with 29 Code of Federal Regulations Part 95.

Applications must be submitted by 4p.m. EDT on May 17, 2012.

Applicants must register before completing the application which can both be done at www.grants.gov. The process is considered to be quite involved and takes multiple days to complete, so eligible applicants are encouraged to begin the process as soon as possible.

Visit the OSHA's training grant website for more information on the Susan Harwood Training Grant Program.

Intelex is pleased to announce they have been selected by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to provide a Training and Licensing Management System for their 4800 employees. The Laboratory, one of nine Johns Hopkins divisions, approached Intelex in search of a cost effective IT system that would allow them to streamline the management of their employee training and certification requirements at the departmental level.

The Intelex Training and Licensing Management System that they selected has the ability to establish specific training requirement and certification standards associated with any workgroup, is robust enough to accommodate a large number of employees, and is highly automated allowing for easy scheduling and re-scheduling of training. The Compliance Report, which is a pre-built feature of the system fosters the generation of real-time reports drawn from all training data in the system. Key reporting metrics include: assigned training by employee, training hours completed, training hours pending, certifications completed, certifications pending, certification renewals approaching as well as data specific to individual courses such as the number of employees assigned to a course and the number completed.

"We are excited to add John Hopkins University to our educational client roster along with others like the University of Virginia and Texas A&M University," commented Intelex President and CEO Mark Jaine, "Our EHSQ software systems have been gaining a lot of momentum within the education industry and we are looking ahead to continue this trend and provide solutions unique to the industry's needs." With the Intelex system being highly scalable in nature, it will be able to adapt to the expanding needs of the University and ultimately not be outgrown.

Find out more about Intelex's Training and Licensing Management System.