CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. ---- After 23 years as an active-duty Marine, David Lopez is preparing to retire. He already is making plans for his next posting.
Lopez, 44, is a member of the inaugural class in a program sponsored by BMW of North America that aims to train military veterans to become service technicians. "My goal is to work in a BMW dealership," Lopez says.
As dealerships face a shortage of techs, they are looking for new sources of qualified candidates. BMW thinks it has found one in military personnel who are preparing to leave the service. In February, the automaker opened a center on the Marine base here.
"We have high demand for technicians," Bernhard Kuhnt, CEO of BMW of North America, told Fixed Ops Journal. Veterans, he says, make "ideal" tech candidates.
BMW calls the initiative at Camp Pendleton, near San Diego, its Military Service Technician Education Program. It offers a 16-week course of instruction, based on the program of the same length BMW uses at its other tech training locations.
Members of other service branches can enroll in MSTEP, although the program gives priority to Camp Pendleton Marines. The inaugural class of nine students includes seven Marines and two U.S. Army soldiers. BMW is covering the cost of the program, which the automaker declined to disclose.
BMW expects the new program to help fill some of the 1,500 vacant and new service tech positions at its 344U.S. dealerships each year, says Denise Melville, department head of BMW Group University, which provides training to BMW dealerships.
A transition from active duty can be daunting, says Brigadier General Kevin Killea, the commanding general of Marine Corps Installations West — Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.
"All they know is the uniform," Killea says. "Here is an opportunity for a skills development program that will lead to a direct [job] placement."
Other programs
BMW says MSTEP is the first automotive tech training program to be located on a military base. Other automakers also have programs that instruct veterans.
Ford Motor Co.'s Trading One Uniform for Another program, supported by its Quick Lane express service division, awards five $10,000 scholarships to veterans each year to support technician training. Mercedes-Benz also offers training to veterans through its 16-week DRIVE program.
At Camp Pendleton, members of the inaugural MSTEP class were chosen though a different process from students in other BMW tech programs, who must have earned certification in a postsecondary automotive program or completed the automotive technology curriculum offered by Universal Technical Institute, a for-profit provider of technical education.
For MSTEP students such as Adam Ritchie, experience working on cars counts. When Ritchie, 23, completes his four years of Marine service in August, he will be ready to begin work at a BMW dealership.
"If I can get paid for my hobby, it will be the best thing ever," Ritchie says.
To get accepted into MSTEP, Ritchie and his classmates had to pass a written test covering general auto repair knowledge. They took a practical test in which a car's engine was covered with a blanket; they had to identify, using Post-it notes, engine components that they couldn't see.They also had to replace an air filter.
BMW is working with UTI on the Camp Pendleton program. The automaker and institute also work together on two other BMW tech training programs in the United States.
"The civilian world does not recognize military experience in terms of credentials," UTI President Kim McWaters says. "When [MSTEP students] graduate, they will have credentials."
Born at a barbecue
The idea for MSTEP emerged from a backyard barbecue, says Craig Westbrook, vice president of BMW of North America's southern region. In 2015, Westbrook — then the automaker's vice president of sales channel development and customer relations — chatted with a Marine veteran who had been deployed in Iraq.
The veteran told Westbrook that BMW could do a better job of letting Marines use the skills they had developed in the military after they returned to civilian life. Westbrook proposed the idea of tech training, but the Marine thought it was "a reach," Westbrook says. Still, Westbrook kept thinking about it and came up with the concept for MSTEP.
"The general [Killea] said veterans are critical thinkers," Westbrook says. "You need that to diagnose a BMW."
To house MSTEP at Camp Pendleton, Melville says, BMW spent "several hundred thousand dollars" to renovate a building next to an open-air garage with a handful of lifts. Newly installed equipment includes a wheel alignment rack, a tire changing machine and wheel balancer, an engine hoist, and a computer loaded with BMW diagnostic software.
CEO Kuhnt says BMW could expand the training program to other military locations, depending on the success of the Camp Pendleton initiative.
Killea says that Marines "identify with an organization and know how to be part of a team." He adds that MSTEP has "tremendous" growth potential, and that he hopes other companies will invest in similar training programs for military personnel.
"I think this will develop into a standard," he says.