The Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) has installed a 35-metre-tall tower crane, not for construction, but as the latest addition to its safety and renewables training facility.
The Institute said the tower crane was set to help improve employment opportunities for CIT students in a range of industries and courses.
It said training in the tower crane would provide students with a safe, highly controlled simulated workplace environment, while allowing them to experience the physical challenges of working and operating equipment safely at height.
CIT Teacher and Global Wind Organisation (GWO) Program Co-ordinator, Ken Wilson said the crane was a welcome addition to the existing training facilities for safety and high-risk training.
“The facility mirrors the needs of local industry at the moment as there is high demand for these skills in areas like construction as well as renewables,” Mr Wilson said.
“In the renewables sector, wind turbines generally exceed 80 meters, based on these evolving engineering designs, safe working at heights training is critical,” he said.
Mr Wilson said the facility did a lot of training to demonstrate how to think and deal safely with emergency situations.
“At ground level, it may be a lot simpler to escape dangerous emergencies, less so at height,” he said.
“The addition of the new tower to our simulated training environment improves the skills of our students so they can better manage risk, assess the situation, react calmly to an emergency, and then safely remove themselves from danger and rescue others in the event of a workplace emergency,” Mr Wilson said.
