Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/674536
May 2016 | EquipmentWorld.com 52 Adcox apparently learned well, according to his teammate Reed. "We had a 2-foot box to reach and he put it right in the middle," Reed says, and then laughs: "Beginner's luck was all that was." Another challenge is locat- ing. "There's probably more of a learning curve on the locating side than on the drills," Vroom says. "For example, some students didn't know a sonde can have two different frequencies. Now they know how to check and change frequencies." "The perception is that the guy on the drill runs the show, but they learn that it's really the guy on the locator that's driving the bus," Bokhoven says. Even though the drill operator has a display, the locator is the one who's seeing the power box at the end of the street, or where the locates are. Students also learn how vital the person running the vacuum excavator is to the process. "He's the one seeing the obstacles in the bore path, and he's the first one to see the ground conditions change," Bokhoven says. One aspect students seem to pick up more quickly is the equipment. "The particular machine doesn't throw them off much," Bokhoven says. "Equipment guys are intui- tive about how things work." The students train on just-off-the-factory- floor Vermeer D20x22 S3 rigs, along with DCI DigiTrak F5 locators. "We have D20x22 Series II drills back home, so these are slightly differ- ent, but nothing major," reports Reed. OTJ training with a twist Before leaving for the day, trainees make sure the locator batteries are being charged, the water is fresh, the hoses are curled up, the equip- ment is washed down and that everything is ready to go to work the next day. "We try to make it as much like a job as possible," Bok- hoven says. But there's one key difference: this "jobsite" doesn't have any pro- duction requirements. If a mistake is made, or a lesson can be taught, everything stops while instructions and adjustments are made. "The beauty of it is, they're allowed to do it wrong," Bokhoven says, "because that's how we're going to teach them. All the tooling they need is at hand, and there's no danger of a utility strike." The setup in Pella gives Vermeer the ability to offer consistent and repeatable training, Bokhoven says. Classroom training takes place in a newly created space in the com- pany's Global Pavilion, after which students head out to a nearby 11.5- acre field to put their head knowl- edge into practice. After class One overall goal is that each student becomes more valuable, both to their employers and to themselves, Vroom says. That value extends to not only knowing the "how" of best practices, but the "why" behind them. training | continued Student Jarred Holland with TB Landmark Construction communicates with his drill operator to execute a pullback.