For the third occasion, Lifting Gear Hire (LGH) welcomed Industrial Training International (ITI) and a classroom of students to it’s massive rental center in Bridgeview, IL to learn about the advanced challenges and solutions of today’s rigging industry.
ITI currently offers two of its own classes in LGH’s prime facility at special times during the year including “Rigging Gear Inspector Level I/II” and “Lift Director & Critical Lift Planning.” The first class was held from November 14-16, 2016 and the second course was offered on the following 17th and 18th. Both were met with tremendous success and rave reviews from the students.
“I’m kind of the main rigging guy at my company and I wanted to learn more about it to become a better inspector,” said Chase Krapfl, Supply Warehouse Lead of Michaels Corporation. “I’ve learned a lot from this course including things about wire rope, chains, synthetic slings – we took tours at Lift-All and learned how slings are made. So, when we inspect them, it’s easier to tell what’s wrong with them. It’s truly been a remarkable course. I don’t know why some people won’t take it.”
LGH also welcomed contest winner, Cody Slammins, who participated and won LGH’s Free Course Offer earlier in September, which involved sending in a video detailing the reasons why they were taking the courses and what they hoped to learn in the process.
“My dad actually showed me the contest on Lifting Gear Hire’s Facebook page,” said Cody Slammins, Project Analyst of Window Insulations, “which showed that all you have to do is make a minute-long video of yourself talking about why you want to take this kind of course. So, I figured I could do that. We tend to use different kinds of slings at our company, so we wanted to be up-to-date on all the most relevant information when it comes to slings and moving material. We went down to the shop, took a video, and posted it to Facebook right away. I’m pretty new to the industry, so there’s a lot of things and terminology I’m not familiar with, but being here for the last three days – it’s a lot of exposure to all the different kinds of materials when it comes to lifting and rigging. With ITI, we’re learning all the new practices when it comes to inspections, different types of rigging setups, and what we need to use for different kinds of lifts. Yeah, there’s a lot of good information that I’ll be able to take back to use. Using LGH headquarters is great, too. Obviously, they have a huge rental center with all the equipment that they rent, but they also have the break where they can test the slings – their capacities, and there’s ample room to do those test inspections. ITI has their own stuff, but to see a working facility that’s using these techniques and this information has definitely been helpful as opposed to being in a classroom where you get no hands on experience.”
Due to the overwhelmingly positive responses from students, more classes are currently being planned for 2017.
“We’ve had a wonderful experience at LGH,” said Joe Kuzar, Assistant Technical Director of ITI. “Everything’s been wonderful, we’ve had a really engaged class with our Rigging Gear Inspector course. It’s been a fantastic group. We’ve had a lot of fun and learned a lot. Coming up later this week we’re going to be doing our Lift Director course. This is a two-day course and moving into the future that’s going to be our course rollout here where it’s going to be Rigging Gear Inspector, Lift Director, and Critical Lift Planning to fill out a week. It’s a good opportunity to cover a wide range of classes and we look forward to coming back next year.”
Details regarding the course dates for 2017 have not been announced. We will update you when that information is available.