By Dean Anderson
OKCBusiness
 

Scott Morgan has only been in Norman for six short months, but as manager of the National Center for Employee Development he understands how vital a role the facility plays for the U.S. Postal Service.

The facility’s expectations within the U.S. Postal Service will again be growing as construction has begun on a new facility that will help further speed the automation of the country’s mail service.

The new facility will be located on the NCED’s 72-acre site on Highway 9 in east Norman.

Workers pushed through melting snow on Jan. 24 to begin dirt work on the 130,000-square-foot structure designed by Gralla GH2 Architects, whose local projects include Remington Park and renovation of the historic Pollard Theatre in Guthrie.

Wynn Construction of Oklahoma City will be the contractor.

“We’re going to dedicate all our technical training for flats (larger envelope packets) processing to this new facility,” Morgan said. “This piece of equipment will complete the automation of the flat stream.”

Morgan said letters and flats compose the bulk of the U.S. Postal Service’s workload, followed by parcels. The postal service is now in its final stages of transitioning to fully automated processing.

The new building will be twice as large as the center’s last building, the east learning center, and completion is scheduled for August.

The NCED focuses on every aspect of training for the postal service, from basic electronics, elevator repair, heating and ventilation to IT and software and hardware training.

The center is composed of the main learning center, a housing facility, a 60,000-square-foot east learning facility and a 996-room hotel.

Morgan has spent 33 years with the Postal Service, starting at the Church Street Post Office in New York. He has served in a variety of roles including manager of human resources for the 10,000-employee Connecticut District and as manager of labor relations for the New England area, which employed some 65,000 postal workers.

The native New Yorker says the NCED and Norman play a crucial role in the continuity of the postal system.

“As things become more digital, more electronic and as the workforce shrinks and the technology grows, we play a bigger market share in the importance of what goes on in the postal service,” Morgan said. “As technology continues to expand, NCED becomes more and more important in the overall training for the postal service, and it’s continually expanding. The evidence of that is the new building.”

Morgan says the postal center draws nearly 20,000 postal employees a year to Norman.

Programs range from one day to five weeks long and cover computer network technology, building systems and fleet maintenance in addition to maintenance training on high-technology equipment for sorting, tracking and routing mail.

The center also brings thousands more to Oklahoma as a host site for business and postal conferences with its onsite conference center, which can hold up to 600 people.