Navy Personnel Qualification Standards

In the Navy we use a training system called Personnel Qualification Standards or PQS for short. The ideology behind this program in that it puts the bulk of responsibility on the individual Sailor in regards to gaining the basic knowledge of the program in a set time frame as opposed to requiring system experts to continually take time to train said Sailor. Once the Sailor believes he or she has the basic knowledge down they need to seek out someone already certified in the program, explain the program and receive a signature from the systems expert. At this point it is the systems experts responsibility to reinforce the Sailors knowledge and expand upon what the Sailor was able to use. After the Sailor completes their PQS it is routed up

The reason this works so well is because first the Sailor must research the subject, either through Navy instructions, professionals in the fields or online programs. Once they believe they have this information down they must be able to articulate this information in a manner that shows they comprehend it. Lastly the Sailor is forced to answer advanced questions on the subject on a board comprised of senior systems experts. The boards often ask scenario based questions where a clear answer isn’t easy and the member is forced to think outside the box and ask the senior members follow up questions to ultimately find the correct answer. Some PQS’ require the Sailor to actually perform parts of the tasks under supervision, under limited supervision and by themselves, often there is a set minimum to receive the required signature to move on. By the end of this process the Sailor has not only gained knowledge on their own they interacted with various experts and had the chance to learn from them, building up their own knowledge and confidence on the subject and finally being challenged by the most senior personnel of the program to ensure they not only know the program but are knowledgeable enough to make decisions in situations often not covered in manuals. Once a Sailor has completed this process senior personnel are extremely confident in the Sailors ability to not only perform the duties but continue the tradition of signing other Sailors PQS’ to help bolster the amount of Sailors crossed trained on various jobs. The overall impact is measured in what is refereed as command readiness; the command readiness programs monitors each program a command has, Training Program, Counseling, 3M, Watch Standing and so on. It also shows how many Sailor are trainined for various programs and at what