BOISE, September 25 — ABM Industries has opened a technical training centre in south Boise aimed squarely at the semiconductor industry’s chronic shortage of fab-ready workers, with the facility at 521 W. McGregor Drive now taking on trainees. The company commemorated the launch on Tuesday.
At opening, the centre can accommodate 500 participants a year, with certification classes running at 10 students per weekly class. Under the hood, the curriculum is deliberately staged.
Trainees begin in a virtual reality environment to understand the fab environment, then move to a mock clean room where smocks and associated safety protocols are mandatory. The course also covers basics around hand tools, how to understand resistance and voltage with electrical boards, and how to use pneumatics for precise wafer construction. Smaller certifications, some completable in a matter of hours, sit alongside reinforcement of foundational safety protocols.
The technical reality of a fab is that the environment itself is the hard part. Training takes place under strict controls for particulates, temperature and humidity — giving newcomers a taste of what operating in a semiconductor fabrication plant actually demands.
Why Boise, and why now
Darrell McDaniel, an ABM executive, said the Boise centre expands on the company’s similar operation in Austin, Texas, which has already seen 300 students earn certifications. The need for a second site, he said, came from feedback from senior engineers responsible for bringing new hires up to speed. “What we built here is the fundamental class for everyone,” McDaniel said.
Ashley Miller, ABM’s director of technical training, said semiconductor companies are consistently hiring for entry-level roles through companies like ABM. Historically, many employees on fab sites have been contractors, which gave ABM a role in recruitment and management.
As those companies have begun hiring fab workers directly, ABM has worked to implement training that differentiates it from programs not fostering a direct workforce pipeline. Attendees at the launch event saw some of the operating procedures at a semiconductor fabrication plant, including the smock and clean room requirements. As ever, the detail that matters is turnover.
Relieving senior engineers of the training burden is the stated goal, and the centre’s throughput — 10 per weekly class, 500 a year — is the number to watch as Idaho’s fab cluster and the wider industry test whether a pipeline built in a mock clean room translates to the real thing.
