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IUOE Local 150 Invests in Vortex Simulators and Doubles Training Capacity

ENR – Engineering News-Record

Union Invests in Simulators to Train Equipment Operators

To help meet the industry’s persistent demand for heavy equipment operators, Local 150 of the International Union of Operating Engineers has gone virtual. Facing a bottleneck in getting apprentices ready to operate heavy iron, the union went all in on simulators, and is now running 11 of the Vortex Advantage stations from CM Labs. And according to trainers, results so far have been promising.

“We were able to double the number of members we got through any one class,” says Mark Kara, assistant coordinator for Local 150’s Apprenticeship and Skill Improvement Program. “We’ve been dabbling in simulators since 2009,” he says. “But those had you sitting in an office chair staring at a screen. It didn’t emulate a real machine very well.”

The Vortex simulators feature multiple monitors and can run different training programs. Local 150 currently has four kinds of earthmoving equipment programmed: excavator, backhoe loader, bulldozer and front-end loader. The simulator isn’t meant to replace stick time on real equipment, but it does give first-time operators a chance to familiarize themselves with the controls and the basics. The cab even vibrates realistically during work, allowing future operators to learn how to run the real machines “by the seat of their pants,” as Kara explains.

Instead of needing multiple instructors on a site with real machines to monitor students, one instructor can walk a room with a dozen simulators. “Noise is a factor in equipment training, but with these we can turn the volume down and guide them through the different exercises,” he says.

The simulators are used not only by apprentices, but also by working operators who want to learn a new type of machine.

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