The creation of our newest method of training delivery, helping you attain your goals faster.

At the end of 2023, we finally brought to market a new method of delivery for training, aimed at providing more options for people looking to enter the water industry and obtain their first qualification. This new delivery method is the Training Bootcamp, but what exactly is it and how is it expected to help?

The bootcamp was officially launched last November and introduced as a fast-paced and intensive means of training. This training method is the shortest form of training that we provide, despite offering a full qualification – it is a face-to-face, full-time option aimed at ‘Building Competent Operators Quickly’.

The idea for this training method developed from a question that we have heard many times from people in the industry, that is “How quickly can I do the training?” 

The Training Bootcamp intends to answer exactly that.

The tough part, for any qualification course the likes of Water Industry Operations (WIO), is the dedication you’re required to apply to your learning. This is usually made difficult by a lack of personal time, a lack of face-to-face teaching or, in the case of WIO – the lack of available technology, plant and equipment to be able to do the training at all.

The requirement for appropriate water technology has long caused a bit of a grey area for training in our industry because we know that WIO training is inherently practical. But, no one is prepared to offer up this technology with ease to individuals not on their payroll. It is a functioning system after all, with real consequences when operated incorrectly so without a role in the industry, or an available supervisor, this becomes tricky to achieve.

What does this mean for people that want to join the water industry? 

Without a job lined up or in hand that allows you to access water technology, you cannot complete the practice requirements of the training. This has been especially challenging for our new starters or our Individuals without technology access.

Our best advice in the past has been to approach your local council and request to be sponsored for some supervised time on-site to get in those practical hours, but we understand that this is difficult to achieve.

The other option is to apply for a job in the industry, but that also proves its own challenge as not everyone is willing to provide the training you need to do the role. Similarly, if you do not have the training or experience, it is difficult to land a role in the industry, other than as a trainee. Which brings us to the second question:

How do we help people enter the industry?

The creation and introduction of the water and wastewater Training Bootcamp is our solution.

The bootcamps beginning

The creation of the bootcamp started with a round of training we conducted for The Erub community in Torres Strait as part of the commissioning of their new RBC Sewage Treatment Plant about twenty years ago.

The training of a half dozen operators from the community needed to be done in the shortest time available under the STP construction contract.

So we launched our Principal Engineer and Owner, David Bristow, along with big Joe Langford and Michael Dobell Brown to train the local nominated operators in all aspects of sewage collection and treatment. The program ran full-time under the supervision of our trainers and trainer/operator and the men instructed, practised and drilled in the theory, practice and skills of operating and maintaining sewage pump stations, gravity sewers, and RBC Sewage treatment.

All learners were tested time and again through the programme and were found competent after an intense 3 months. All earned and were awarded their Certificate II in Water Operations.

The program has been run in a number of several Torres Strait communities, in Indonesia’s Lombok Strait Islands and at Wujal Wujal to support local operators operating and maintaining their sewerage schemes across networks and treatment plants, as part of the new infrastructure builds for their communities.

The programme worked so well with small groups of 5-8 learners in remote communities, that we decided to offer it to the industry as a whole to enable the training of operators intensely, quickly and successfully to achieve recognition of their competence at Certificate II and Certificate III WIO qualification level.

How did this transfer to the training bootcamp?

This training was a very successful first for us, with the training finishing up within 6 months. This showed us that this kind of training could be completed relatively quickly, so long as you allowed people the right environment to complete it in, thus inspiring the creation of what we now know as the Bootcamp.

The bootcamp name reflects the intense and focused nature of the training camp. The bootcamp structure is based on a Monday to Friday with full-time hours over 16 weeks or 3 months. This time equates to the required learning hours and is the most condensed time that we have determined will allow a person to achieve their qualification.

The bootcamp is held on a client site suitable for the range of training required – specifically making sure that the proposed training plans and requirements of the students match with the available site technology. This is important for us to get right, as part of the point of the bootcamp is for learners to be able to do their 400+ learning and practice hours throughout the bootcamp.

For the bootcamp, the learners are in a classroom setting for the theory delivery aspects of the training, and onsite for the practical delivery. An experienced S&B trainer will be onsite throughout the entire duration of the bootcamp, attending the site every day for both theory and assessment and to conduct controlled simulations for learners to enact their learning in a real environment with live assets and equipment.

The culmination of these activities results in an intense and impactful delivery method that aims to provide competent and confident operators.

We are very proud and excited to see how our delivery method helps to extend the reach and provide opportunities for more people to get involved in the water industry.