Real Work Learning

Training, facilitation, and AI enablement that people can actually use.

I help teams learn faster, lead better, and adopt AI with judgment, and I build practical tools when off-the-shelf won’t do.

Less lecture. More practice. Better results.

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Chris Smith speaking on stage at a Texas State Technical College panel

What I do

Four ways I help teams do real work better.

From hands-on workshops to custom AI tools, everything I do is grounded in how the work actually happens.

Facilitation & Workshops

Interactive sessions on leadership, communication, AI, and team development.

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Training Solutions

Onboarding, trainer guides, competency checks, and systems that make training repeatable.

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AI Training

Plain-language AI workshops that help teams use tools with judgment, not hype.

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Bespoke AI Solutions

Custom AI and workflow tools that solve real operations, maintenance, and training problems.

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A team working through a hands-on training activity on the floor

Training & enablement

Practical learning that connects to the job.

Most workplace training sounds good on paper and falls apart in real life. I build workshops, onboarding, and training systems that help people practice, talk through real situations, and leave with tools they can use the same day, including plain-language AI training that builds judgment, not just speed.

Workshops Training Systems AI Training

Bespoke AI solutions

And when training needs a tool, I build it.

Custom AI and workflow tools I've designed for operations, training, maintenance, and manufacturing teams.

Training & Onboarding

Training Command Center

A live training-journey dashboard for supervisors and training admins.

Tracks every trainee across 90-day and 6-week journeys in six departments: current step, next action, owner, due date, blockers, check-ins, and final certification. One view replaces spreadsheet chaos.

Built with Claude Code & Codex

Maintenance

Mechanical Skills Gap Analysis

A two-stage assessment that turns skill gaps into a coaching plan.

A 45-question scenario-based written test plus tablet-administered practical stations, blended into a weighted technician readiness profile with a safety gate. Identifies maintenance skill gaps and drives targeted training.

Built with Claude Code & Codex

Knowledge

SME Knowledge Capture

Turn expert know-how into reusable training and agent-ready content.

“Tribe” captures tribal knowledge from subject matter experts, then parses each transcript into a Training Guide, How-To, and Agent Knowledge, organized by department and exportable as a reusable knowledge pack.

Built with Claude Code & Codex

Manufacturing & Planning

MRP Assistant

Surface coverage, shortage risk, and planning signals faster.

A coverage dashboard that tracks SKUs across the planning horizon and flags window alerts and active shortages, so teams see what needs action without digging through systems and spreadsheets.

Live practice

Rehearsing a coaching conversation, out loud

Leadership

Difficult Conversation Voice Agent

Practice hard conversations out loud, before they happen for real.

A leadership-support voice agent for rehearsing difficult conversations, evaluations, mid-years, and coaching discussions. A safe place to practice tone, structure, and follow-through.

Case studies

A closer look at three of them.

The problem on the floor, what I built, and what changed.

Training Journey dashboard with active trainees, progress, and action filters

Training & Onboarding

Training Command Center

The problem

Training progress lived in scattered spreadsheets. Across six departments and three shifts, supervisors and training admins had no single, current view of who was on track, who was blocked, what was overdue, or which trainees still needed a trainer.

What I built

A command center for the whole training journey: a dashboard of active journeys, blockers, and overdue steps; per-trainee detail with timeline, onboarding checklist, and certification status; trainer-capacity views; and admin controls for pausing, reassigning, and noting journeys.

The result

One live view of every active 90-day and 6-week journey, with current step, next action, owner, and due date at a glance, so action items surface early instead of slipping through the cracks.

Built with Claude Code & Codex

Skills Gap Assessment overview with the three-part assessment flow

Maintenance

Mechanical Skills Gap Analysis Tool

The problem

Maintenance teams needed an honest, consistent way to identify technician skill gaps and plan training around them, without turning the assessment into a pass/fail grade.

What I built

A three-part tool: a 45-question scenario-based written assessment that tests troubleshooting judgment; tablet-administered practical stations scored on a four-level rubric with hard-gate critical-fail safety items; and a weighted readiness profile (written 35% / practical 50% / observation 15%) with a safety gate that blocks sign-off while a critical gap is open.

The result

Category scores and prioritized training needs turn results into a coaching plan rather than a grade, with safety gaps surfaced before a technician is cleared to work independently.

Built with Claude Code & Codex

Knowledge

SME Knowledge Capture (Tribe)

The problem

Critical know-how lived in the heads of a few experienced people. When they were busy, or gone, that knowledge was hard to teach and easy to lose.

What I built

Tribe captures a transcript from a subject matter expert and parses it into structured outputs: a Training Guide, a How-To, and Agent Knowledge, tagged by department and knowledge type (process, troubleshooting, system, tribal) and stored in a searchable library.

The result

Tribal knowledge becomes reusable training material and agent-ready content that any team can pull from, and an exportable knowledge pack that travels across the plant.

Built with Claude Code & Codex

How I build

Real tools come from real workflows.

I don’t start with the technology. I start with the work, then build the smallest thing that genuinely helps.

Start with the real workflow

I learn how the work actually happens: the pressure, the handoffs, and the workarounds, before building anything.

Prototype fast

I get a working version in front of people quickly, so they react to something real instead of a slide deck.

Build in judgment and guardrails

Safety gates, human review, and honest limits are designed in from the start. AI assists; people decide.

Hand off something usable

The goal is a tool teams actually use on the floor: documented, teachable, and built to last.

The experience behind the build

I ran training at scale before I built tools for it.

For over a decade I have led training across upscale hospitality and an FDA-regulated manufacturing floor, for hundreds of employees spanning six departments and three shifts. I know exactly where training breaks down in real operations: knowledge trapped in a few people’s heads, progress buried in spreadsheets, trainers stretched too thin. The AI tools I build come straight from that experience, designed to fix the problems I lived with every day.

10+ yearsLeading training in demanding operationsFrom upscale hospitality to an FDA-regulated plant floor.

HundredsOf employees trained and trackedAcross six departments and three shifts in regulated manufacturing.

20+AI tools shippedBuilt to fix the gaps I lived with, from onboarding to skills analysis.

About

An operator who teaches and builds.

My background runs from hospitality training at Hillstone to operations training on an FDA-regulated manufacturing floor at Mary Kay, across hundreds of employees and six departments. That foundation shapes how I work: structure plus humanity, clear standards plus room to grow.

Now I pair that operational discipline with practical AI, helping teams learn and adopt AI with judgment, and building the tools they need when nothing off-the-shelf fits.

More about me

Let’s build something useful

Need training, facilitation, or a tool built for how your team really works?

Whether it's a workshop, a stronger training system, AI enablement, or a custom tool, let us talk about what would actually move the needle.

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Less lecture. More practice. Better results.