Workforce Development
Nobody Gets Hurt
As one of North America’ s largest construction and engineering organizations, safety is paramount at Kiewit Energy Canada Corporation. However, achieving its simple and direct mandate – nobody gets hurt— is no small task for a company that employs roughly 17,000 people across the U. S. and Canada. To help ensure its goal was met, Kiewit turned to ITI.
“ We have a pretty extensive training program in-house, but some of the programs that ITI runs are definitely more in-depth than the ones we have,” Steve Gibson, the Canadian regional crane compliance manager for Kiewit, said.
“ We had some gaps in our training with regards to rigging; our in-house training was just basic rigging, and ITI had the advanced rigger training which I thought would be better than reinventing the wheel,” Gibson added.
To help Kiewit accomplish its training objective, ITI sent three of its best trainers to eat, sleep and rig with the company’ s Kiewit contractors at the Kearl Oil Sands in northern Alberta. The trio spent three weeks in the trenches, focusing their energies on teaching crane assembly, disassembly and critical lift planning for the cranes at the site.
“ I think we had about 50 people through the training, people from every trade,” Gibson said.“ Even electricians use cranes on-site, so we had a pretty broad spectrum of people there.”
Due to a small miscommunication, many of the contractors in the ITI advanced rigger courses were Kiewit employees who focused on working below the hook, actually performing the rigging and lifting exercises rather than planning them. Realizing the needs of their audience, ITI’ s instructors changed gears, focusing on the practical, hands-on aspects of their training regimen and trimming the critical lift section.
“ The training itself was great and it actually helped our in-house trainers get a better understanding, and it helped our basic rigging course run better as well,” Gibson said.“ There was definitely good feedback, I don’ t think anyone walked away from the course without learning something.”
Planning for Everything
When hoisting a sunken ship out of a river, the last thing any safety manager wants to wonder is,“ Did we plan for everything that could go wrong?” For Fraser River Pile and Dredge, Canada’ s largest marine construction, land foundations and dredging contractor, any plan that doesn’ t consider every possibility is
Hands on rigging training is a key part of ensuring worker proficiency and safety on jobsites.
not acceptable.
“ In our construction division, we do rigging almost every day of the year that we work, but the level of training was pretty basic,” J. F. Landry, safety and environmental manager at Fraser River, said.“ We wanted to raise the overall competency of Fraser River’ s workforce, but not just by focusing on certified journeyman workers, but also on the guys who plan lifts, which was an area that needed work.”
That’ s when Fraser River decided to contact ITI to help ensure its safety standards were met and its riggers stayed safe. Critical lift training was especially significant for Fraser River because of the wide range of environments it rigs in and the dangerous types of lifts it frequently performs.
“ The biggest things that we move are structural components on the water, like a marine crane or a ferry terminal, but those aren’ t the most dangerous,” Landry said.“ The most dangerous lifts happen when the rigging gets out onto the water, like when raising a sunken ship or a building that has collapsed. There are a lot of variables; lots of things going on under the water that we cannot see.”
ITI has now trained approximately 40 of Fraser River’ s employees ranging from journeymen workers to critical lift planners.“ ITI’ s training helped identify risks and how to address them,” Landry said.“ We continually look for ways to achieve new and higher standards. They provided the knowledge and the foundation and now there’ s more information and planning going on.
“ We are very pleased with ITI’ s outstanding training performance,” Landry added.“ The investment in this program is worth every single dollar.”
CM Labs offers its Mobile Training Center to give companies and training institutions the flexibility to offer programs on-site.
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