TRAINING
Simulations allow trainees to be confronted by
dangerous scenarios in a safe space.
for example, e-learning is particularly good for those who want to take a bit longer to absorb things, or who are independent learners who want to read around the subject as well, and do it at their own pace at home at weekends or after work. Some newcomers to the industry did not do particularly well at school and find a classroom setting off-putting; others respond very well to sitting at a desk with a teacher and a whiteboard at the front of the room. Virtual, digital, classroom, face-to- face, simulator, real crane – they all have their places in teaching and in learning.”
Training can be delivered via external providers or through in-house courses.
But what should be taught and learned? “Information is now instantly available online in a way that it never used to be,” he says. “It means that the ability to memorise routine or facts is becoming less important.” But if the screen on your overhead crane control panel should freeze, or the interface go down, a basic knowledge of how to reboot it might be more than valuable.
Which raises another point: we have so far discussed training only in the context of new entrants to the industry. What of refreshment training? Is there a need for it? If so, how often should it be done? It might be hard to tell a 55-year-old who has been operating cranes all his working life, whose feel for lifting is ingrained in his bones – and who may have mentored at one time or another every other crane operator in the company – that he needs some extra training. His ability to move a load across the factory floor with no sway may be a wonder to behold; but today anti-sway software is almost universal on overhead cranes; and did software of any kind even exist when he began in the business? “You cannot set a hard-and-fast time interval for
refreshment training,” says Maloney, “but I put it like this: If you were in hospital would you be happy to be operated on by a surgeon whose most recent training took place 40 years ago?” Training on a simulator is cheaper than training
on a real crane in a factory. The reason is simple: it does not take that real crane out of production while a new recruit works out how to use it. But for all its realism, for all its ability to give practice in emergency scenarios, a question remains: would you really let a new operative who has only sat in a simulator – no matter how realistic a simulator – loose unsupervised on a real overhead gantry crane on day one of his new certificate-holding employment? Clearly not; but how long an experienced user should be at his shoulder is hard to say. Maloney again: “At the end of the day, the employer is the arbiter of competence.” It is for the employer to make that call. “We are in an industry that all of the time is fighting gravity,” says Maloney. “That can be dangerous. And that is the whole reason that we make training courses, and assess training courses and encourage people to take training courses [whether] digital, virtual, in-person, in- classroom, that all have their place and they all have the same aim: it is to make things safer.”
36 | November/December 2026 |
www.hoistmagazine.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87
