Participants in the Indigenous Forestry Conference had a shot at getting up close and almost personal with some heavy equipment earlier this month.
The BC Road Builders RoadShow offered a chance to "operate" various heavy equipment without a licence in a unique mobile simulator.
The 34-foot trailer with hands-on simulators was parked at the Best Western Plus Barclay Hotel Sept. 10-11 in Port Alberni. While there are 15 or 16 different software packages that can run on the four simulators, the RoadShow was running the excavator, rock truck, wheel loader and snow plow at the conference.
While the simulators weren't directly related to the forestry industry, it gave an example of what kind of technology is out there for education, said Matt Pitcairn, president of the BC Road Builders and Heavy Construction Association.
"At the heart of this initiative was how can we attract future talent to the industry," said Pitcairn. "The construction industry as a whole, like every other industry out there, is facing a huge wave of retirements on the horizon and we're all trying to to our best to attract the workers of the future. We saw simulators as a great tool to do that, whether it's youth or new immigrants or someone just looking for a career change."
So far they have had 7000 engagements with the curious and dedicated. Pitcairn said it is difficult to track how effective the program is, although one of their first users was part of the Abbotsford school district heavy equipment program and is now working for a company in Langley.
Bringing the technology to the Indigenous Forestry Conference was an "outside the box" idea, said Pitcairn. Many of the locations the RoadShow has visited have been through inbound requests. "Heavy equipment is huge in both our worlds."
The RoadShow program was made possible through a combination of federal and provincial government grant funding from the Ministry of Social Services and Poverty Reduction. The funding is for three years: the first year of development and two years of touring around B.C.
The BC Roadbuilders Road Show will continue its circuit of the province through to 2026, when the three-year grant will conclude. PItcairn said the simulators will then be used as learning tools, although he didn't say at which educational institution.
The simulators are ideal for teaching because they are economical: saving on wear and tear of equipment as well as expensive fuel costs. "It's a lot cheaper and safer to get someone trained up on a simulator before you put them on the real machine."
Pitcairn said there are different paths people can take if they want to operate heavy equipment, and the path is different depending on what part of the province you're in. The BC Road Builders have a career directory on the BC RoadShow website, www.bcroadshow.ca.
