As an engineering firm with clients in mining, oil and gas and other natural resources sectors, your focus can be on everything from front-end engineering to site management through to decommissioning. You do your due diligence to ensure that your client sites are technically sound, safe, profitable, socially responsible, and in compliance with local regulations. Your clients want that too, but they also want to be able to run their operation as efficiently as possible to get the maximum return on their investment.

Operator Training for your clients’ workforce is probably low on your list of priorities because you have technical challenges that are critical to overcome and let’s face it, probably more interesting to grapple with. But training for the operators who will be running the site for many years is always high on your client’s list of priorities.

If you’re like many engineering companies, you’re time-strapped, too. In fact, you’re likely all too familiar with the following client training challenges faced by engineering firms:

The Three Most Persistent Client Training Problems plaguing engineering firms today:

1. You don’t have the time or skills to create effective operator training programs. Your staff is already overloaded by the sheer amount they have to do. Lean and mean doesn’t leave much room for non-core activities. And let’s put the cards on the table: for you, developing, managing and decommissioning your client sites is your core business; client training is a sideline, maybe even a necessary nuisance.

2. Your engineering and technical staff already has its hands full with installation and site management and doesn’t have the time or inclination to train operators.

3. After training, your staff spends a lot of time in client support mode dealing with issues that weren’t covered in the training. Or it was covered, but somehow the learners didn’t get it, or can’t remember it exactly. The ultimate outcome: you’re feeling squeezed and your client isn’t happy both with the training and the lack of operator performance they’re getting.

Imagine instead:

Legions of satisfied clients raving about how well their operators can realize and optimize the strengths and benefits of their new site, how production is off to a quick start and the time to profitability is shortened. And for you that means your client makes smarter use of your engineering designs, less staff time in the field explaining and correcting, and operators who by working within the structures and processes your firm has developed, are able to showcase daily the value you’ve brought to the project.

In other words, wouldn’t you rather be able to:

• Stick to your core business and keep your engineering teams focused on what they know best— planning, constructing and commissioning new sites.

• Keep your field engineers excited and engaged. Delivering training is maybe not their area of expertise or interest. You want them to be engaged in their work, doing work that is mission-critical and ground-breaking.

• Win in the marketplace by over-delivering to your clients. Delight your clients with outstanding training results and you can outsmart and outperform your competitors. Good training is what clients want but so often don’t get.

• Reduce client complaints caused by poor operating practices. Even if your design is world class, it can be undermined by mediocre operating practices. Implement a systematic process to develop training content and measure results so that you can be confident that the required operator knowledge and skills have been fully taught and learned.

• Reduce your corporate and personal liability. If poorly trained operators cause an accident or are in an accident themselves, training or the lack thereof will be one the first things investigators go after.

The Solution?

The Just For Operators Training System

A painless way to attain these objectives, a way to take the pressure off you and your staff and put you far ahead of your competitors: The Just for Operators Training System, a course development and delivery package guaranteed to produce operators that can run the process plant and heavy equipment in the manner and to the standard you set. It’s a program in which we at North Pacific design, develop and implement operating training on your behalf, so you don’t have to.

Training is a component of your overall project package that is highly valued by your clients. They’re all looking for it, so give them a program that reliably produces consistently high-performing operators.

1. The Just for Operators Training System produces consistently high-performing plant and equipment operators for your clients.

2. The program is built in accordance with the engineering expectations you set.

3. The program is fully tailored to your clients’ site-specific needs. It includes the knowledge of the context, concepts, tools and equipment and operating principles that operators need, as well as structured on the job practice and feedback loops. It has reference guides and puts great emphasis on field practice and regular feedback.

4. The Just for Operators Training System gives you peace of mind because you know your client training is taken care of. It’s training with consistent, predictable, measurable results.

The aim of the program

There are lots of people around who can help you put a training program together. But not all training is great training. In fact, a lot of operator training isn’t training so much as an information dump that everyone hopes will somehow transform operator effort into improved performance and productivity. Often it doesn’t because it’s based on outdated teaching models that never worked very well in the first place.

Traditional training programs result in knowledge of the systems; the Just for Operators Training System results in improved job performance that leads to better operational efficiencies. That’s what your clients really want. Give it to them and they will clearly see that your firm understands good training and its ability to produce results.

The Just for Operators Training System is unique in at least three important ways:

1. We use a defined process to engineer effective instruction. We determine what will be included in the training through a facilitated, collaborative and systematic approach. We include master performers and subject matter experts in the analysis and design process. The focus is always on increasing the bottom line.

2. Our process details the journey from analysis and design through development to delivery and evaluation. This ensures that all training is based on the specific knowledge and skills requirements of the job. It makes it easy to maintain the courses down the road because content needing updates can be readily pinpointed and revised.

3. We have years of experience working with natural resources sector personnel, from product managers and engineers through to operators, plant managers and VPs. We are comfortable working in union and non-union environments.

The Key Benefits

Here’s what you’ll have when the Just for Operators Training System is in place:

1. A strategy built around client needs and satisfaction. Your clients need their operators to be well-trained so that they derive maximum benefit from your site design and processes, and that can’t be done off the back of an envelope. The training that North Pacific provides on your behalf will be the most robust they have ever seen.

2. A strategy to outsmart and outperform your competitors. Every project, every time. North Pacific’s operator training model gives you a powerful selling point that differentiates you in the marketplace.

3. Reduced Corporate Liability. The systematic thoroughness of our approach will enable both you and your clients to clearly demonstrate you have done your due diligence and taken all reasonable steps to train your client operators to work in a manner safe to themselves and those around them.

4. Increase value-recognition for your work. Well-trained operators are able to perform as intended. That means a smoother start up, and less wear and damage to plants and equipment, particularly in the first few critical weeks and months as operators get used to their new tasks and procedures.

5. The program gives you the opportunity to have input and control over the content so that operators learn the best ways to run the plant and site you’ve built, without making long-term demands on your staff and their time.

And look what the Just for Operators Training System does for your clients

It improves operational efficiencies on a variety of fronts:

1. Contributes to smoother start-ups

2. Optimizes ongoing operations and improves production volumes and asset utilization

3. Ensures operators are able to work within and meet the requirements for health and safety, environmental and other regulatory requirements

4. Reduces equipment wear, damage and breakdowns

5. Captures existing knowledge to fill the gap as older workers retire

How the Just for Operators Training System works

There are three stages to this program.

Stage 1. We work with your staff, using our operator course development system, to create a core Just for Operators program. We supply the training structure and you supply the training content and together we develop a core operator training course. The result—training that will promote optimal learning for your clients’ operators.

The core course includes knowledge and skills components, classroom and field sessions, and supervised practice, as well as written and structured field tests. For instructor-led sections of the training, there will be lesson plans to ensure consistency of delivery and teaching aids such as slides, learner manuals, DVDs and reference guides. There will also be a train the trainer unit to teach you and/or your client trainers how to deliver the training effectively. The core will address safety, environmental and other regulatory requirements to ensure the training is compliant. Web-based E-learning is also an option, depending on the site’s ability to access the Internet.

Stage 2. We help you with the training component of your project proposals, for each proposal you write. We ensure that the value of performance-based operator training—cost savings, improved operator efficiency and lower liability risk—is clearly delineated for your clients. This training component can become a significant differentiator between your proposal and those of your competitors because your best clients will recognize the value of superlative operator training.

Stage 3. When a project gets the go-ahead, we modify the core materials to meet the specific client requirements. Typically we incorporate manufacturers’ equipment and the associated valve numbers, process flow rates, etc. into a training package that is integrated with your operating processes and specifications. We give each client a program customized to their site requirements.

We can work as North Pacific, or go under your company name as a sub-contractor. We will sign all necessary non-disclosure agreements. North Pacific carries liability insurance for all its employees and associates.

Is this system right for you?

This program is designed specifically for engineering firms working with clients in the natural resources sector—primarily mines, oil and gas, forestry, and pulp and paper.

Competency-based, defensible training systems such as the Just for Operators Training System are not for every engineering firm or every client. Some are happy to just get by with their traditional “back of the envelope” training.

This system won’t work with companies who:

• Believe operators will figure it out for themselves

• Don’t think they will be held accountable should there be an accident or environmental mishap in which inadequate training is determined to have been a contributing factor

• Think training content is selected by:
   ♦ What they know best
   ♦ What they were taught
   ♦ What they enjoy teaching
   ♦ What they have experience with
   ♦ Rather than what the worker most needs for successful operating performance

But if your firm is aiming to produce operationally efficient sites, build strong client allegiances, or gain a market advantage over stiff competition, then the Just for Operators Training System is a must-have.

You don’t have to struggle any more with training development and delivery. There is an effective and proven tool available for you right here to get the edge on your competition, meet client demands and stay focused on your core business.

Here’s how to find out more

If you’ve read this far, you may be interested in taking the next step. We invite you to contact us for a complimentary Training Strategy Session. This is a no-obligation way to find out more about our system and whether it’s right for you.

In this session we will identify the client training challenges you face, the kind of results you’d like to see and whether this system may be of help or not. Whether we move forward together or not, you will leave our conversation clear about the issues you’re facing and excited about what’s possible.

The conversation will take about an hour and can be done in person or by phone or by Skype. Fill out the contact form below and I will be in contact with you within the next 24-48 hours.

I look forward to speaking with you.
Jim Tallman
jtallman@north-pacific.ca
604.722.1410

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