Heavy equipment simulator gives trainees a taste of on-the-job excitement
It’s like playing video games in a mine
CAMBRIDGE BAY – Driving a heavy equipment simulator is a bit like being a lead player in a video game located in a mine.
By the side of the road, you see the stark, boulder-filled scenery of a typical mine site. Another vehicle passes you, so you have to be careful. But making a sharp turn, your vehicle crashes down a slope. You hear and see the accident unfold before you in a deafening explosion of red.
All the while, the simulator records how you respond, so you can learn later from your at-the-wheel mistakes.
This high-tech virtual experience helps people learn how to operate heavy equipment.
Bought by Kitikmeot Corp. to train Inuit for jobs at the region's mines, the simulator from Australia replicates the cabs of Caterpillar vehicles and offers three-dimensional video imaging to reproduce driving conditions at a mine.
The simulator provides a wrap-around colour display, backed up by the authentic digital sounds of an engine dumping or loading and a seat that responds to the simulator's every movement.
The simulator screen can produce many real-life conditions, such as night, a blizzard or traffic. Rear view mirrors duplicate what you would see if you were driving along.
Like aircraft simulators used to train and update pilots, heavy equipment simulators have revolutionized mines' recruitment and training.
That's because traditional heavy equipment operator training means a machine must be removed from mine production, which results in lost revenue and also carries risks to expensive machinery and the operator trainee.
And on-site training doesn't include life-threatening scenarios such as accidents, fires and breakdowns.
Training operators at a simulator is much more cost-efficient for Nunavut than sending them out of the territory for courses, said simulator instructor Darrell Ohokannoak.
"This is where you'll be sitting and realize that this isn't the job for you," he said.
What operators mainly need is patience, Ohokannoak said, because in a blizzard operators can be told to stop for hours until driving conditions improve.
Ohokannoak and Richard Evalik, who manage the internet service provider, Polarnet, recently completed their master instructor training at Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in Edmonton. The two then tested out their training on a student, who was immediately hired on as a heavy equipment operator at the Tahera diamond mine.
A two-week course on a heavy equipment simulator is planned for the near future, where trainees will receive 40 hours of practice, safety instruction and, if they pass, a permit to operate heavy equipment.
The purchase of the costly simulator is one of the ways the Kitikmeot Inuit Association and Kitikmeot Corp. to prepare Inuit in the region for work at the mines.
Stung by the Government of Nunavut's decision to pass on buying the former Lupin mine site as a mine training school and then its move to put the trades school in Rankin Inlet, the region now wants to see a revamped Nunavut Arctic College campus in Cambridge Bay for mine training programs.
"It is important that the Government of Nunavut demonstrate that it understands the Kitikmeot's need for modern facilities and specialized training that our residents require if they are to fully participate in the unprecedented mining development that is currently underway in the Kitikmeot," Cambridge Bay MLA Keith Peterson told the Nunavut legislature on Nov. 5.
The next day, Peterson asked Ed Picco, the GN's minister of education, for a commitment to create a new Nunavut Arctic College complex in Cambridge Bay.
Picco said the GN plans to offer millwright training in the community through Nunavut Arctic College. As for a new building, Picco said there might be "some opportunity" in 2008 to move on Peterson's concern that the Kitikmeot may miss out on hundreds of mining jobs if there aren't more training facilities in the region.
According to information tabled at the recent Kitikmeot Inuit Association annual general meeting, in 2006-7, 163 Kitikmeot Inuit were working at mines in the region, 67 seasonally at camps formerly owned by Miramar, 15 at the Ekati mine, 15 at Diavik and 66 at Tahera.
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