In Asia, the regional training centre is located at Subic Bay in the Philippines. It is complete with well appointed air-conditioned classrooms, hands-on training engines and components, and a control room simulator. |
Training for the power plant industry will in future aim to cover the power company’s own competence and career management processes. Wärtsilä, through its Land and Sea Academy (WLSA), is able to deliver a total solution package in this area of human resource development and management.
More than ever, power plant owners need to ensure that their personnel are trained to optimize the plant’s generating capabilities to the full. The specialist skills enhancement training provided by the equipment supplier, like Wärtsilä, can play a vital role in achieving this aim.
Power plant owners and operators around the world are constantly looking for ways to improve their plant’s performance levels. For the plant to provide its owners with peak performance, it is essential to train all levels of the workforce so that their skills match the power plant perfectly. All people in the plant need to be able to maximize the potential of the modern technologies being delivered and installed nowadays.
This is where specialist skills enhancement training can play a vital role in developing the ability of the workforce to realize the plant’s full potential. The training programme needs to be able to address the skill enhancement needs of all personnel from managers and supervisors, to operators, mechanics and electricians.
Such training is a highly specialized area and for this reason owners are increasingly outsourcing this function because training is not the power company’s core business. In-house personnel do not have the time to spare, nor with new technologies do they have the technical knowledge needed.
Training improves the bottom line
Many case studies have shown that well planned and implemented training reduces operating and maintenance costs many times over. Increasingly, Wärtsilä sees training as having more influence and emphasis in their customers’ thinking and planning.
Wärtsilä’s training programmes are specially designed to fit each power plant or the customer in question. It is not just a matter of selecting a course ‘off the shelf’ from a list in the hope it will fit the business needs. The programme is normally developed in close co-operation and discussion with the customer to meet his business goals.
As the drive towards increased profits and higher efficiencies gets keener, power companies are realizing the value of ‘skills enhancement’ training and see the concrete results from Wärtsilä’s courses, for example through significant cost savings.
For this reason companies often require additional on-site training each year to refresh existing skills levels and obtain new knowledge on the latest methods and technologies.
Fine-tuning the power plant
Wärtsilä is often involved from the very start of the project in designing and implementing training programmes for the whole workforce. Plant personnel are supplied with initial training while the plant is being built or upgraded. This early training is carried out at both WLSA training centres and at the customer’s site.
The training is completed in groups, focusing on the correct operation and maintenance of the power plant and its auxiliary equipment. The courses are then broken into subgroups to concentrate on operations procedures and guidelines for the operators, maintenance and overhaul procedures for the maintenance and repair crews, and electrical systems knowledge and training for the electricians. Most power plants cross-train their people for overall manpower utilization.
Following the initial programme, continual training is provided either through on-site customized courses and follow-up courses, or at Wärtsilä’s own training facilities for advanced engine and advanced electrical courses. The e-learning service is also available online on the internet, or in the form of electronic material delivered via CD.
During the courses, the trainees learn the correct way to ‘tune the plant’ and the maintenance procedures for their plant. This plant tuning is aimed at reducing the lube oil and fuel consumption of the plant.
Following a course, Wärtsilä has found that on many occasions the heat rate, fuel consumption and lube oil consumption calculations of the plant improve significantly, which pleases the customer and proves the value of good training.
The future for training
Current traditional training methods will always have their place. However, companies are starting to use the newly developed remote access technology such as on-line and self-paced e-learning where suitable. New document handling processes make it easier for the training company to continually review and update the content of these courses, using of course the results of previous training courses.
Quality systems are requiring companies to plan for training and be able to show it has been effective. This push by the power industry is also a driving force behind the need for advanced training courses for enhancing the skills of the plant’s staff.
The training needs to be relevant to the customer’s long-term business plans and it also needs to be continual. The individual course structures must be well thought out and planned so that the courses complement each other and progress systematically. The course’s content must continue to advance and focus on new questions, problems and requirements.
All types of power plants, old and new, will benefit from specifically designed training programmes.
by Jari Ullakonoja, Director, Wärtsilä Land and Sea Academy
