County Commission | The Magazine June 2017

NEWS YOU CAN USE ACEA begins training for equipment operators J une means summer vacation for a lot of people, but for many county equipment operators it’s the first day of school. The Association of County Engineers of Alabama (ACEA) is launching a series of Motor Grader Operator Training courses this month, with sessions in eight host counties across the state. These classes, taught by seven County Field Instructors and nine County Engineers, were created with the goal of using existing county resources to provide critical, cost-saving training. The project, led by Chris Champion, John Bedford, Randy Cole, and Justin Hardee, has been in the works for two years, and is a perfect example of county leaders speaking with the unified voice to develop county government’s answer to a pressing and expensive problem. Skilled motor grader operators are in short supply, and training is usually expensive and can only be found out of state. Leaders of this project have aimed at keeping travel and expenses low for the trainees, as counties will register for the class in the host county that is within a 1-2 hour drive. Just this spring, there was a three-day mock training in Elmore County to test the format, which combines classroom training taught by experienced County Engineers, and field training that gets class attendees in the seat of a motor grader, working on real road projects. Each class is kept small as to ensure that every trainee gets the maximum amount of time behind the wheel of the motor grader, operating the machine on a jobsite. Training modules were developed by 11 expert motor grader operators – with a combined 188 years of experience – and Dr. Susan Fillippeli, a faculty member in Communication at Auburn University with expertise in developing training programs. Each trainee will receive a training notebook with developed classroom modules, in addition to field training in the following seven areas: Initial walk around and safety inspection, basic machine operations, operational and personal safety, blade and crown, pulling ditches and pushing tail ditches/ turnouts, spreading material, and handling debris. Photos contributed by Chris Champion 24 | COUNTY COMMISSION The seven modules of field training include initial walk around and safety inspection (above), blade and crown (below) and spreading material (right).

County Commission | The Magazine June 2017 | Page 24