Operator Training: Why You Should Invest In Your Staff

Veolia Water Technologies UK (VWT UK) prides itself on its services and maintenance packages. To further improve the efficiency of a plant, investing in operator training can have significant benefits. Here Sally Griffiths-Parry, Senior Account and Programme Manager at VWT UK discusses. 
While initial product familiarisation training is provided when VWT UK equipment is purchased, some of our technologies will have a considerable lifespan if properly maintained. As a result, new operators can often find themselves inheriting existing equipment without having had any direct training from the manufacturer.

Available on request, VWT UK’s operator training is designed to help individuals get to know their way around their VWT UK units. However, it can also be beneficial for existing staff to refresh and expand their understanding of the systems in their care. For example, as an operator gets to grips with a technology, they may want to delve deeper into the unit’s workings. Alternatively, as a plant’s requirements change and develop, more advanced diagnostics training could become helpful.

That’s why our training can be tailored to an operator’s specific needs and can encompass a wide variety of areas such as: 

• Learning how to reset, clear and identify alarms or faults and troubleshoot issues without assistance

• Checking the feed water to a unit, identifying the main flow path and the processes that take place within the technology

• Identify regular checks required as well as where and how to record them as needed

• Instruction on how to carry out more advanced cleaning and disinfection procedures

• Training on what consumables need replacing, when and how.

Alternatively, for new staff, it could be as simple as understanding how to turn the unit on and off safely, isolate the unit electrically if required and identify the key parts of the unit itself. 

Whatever the requirement, operator training can have a number of key benefits:

1 - Reduction in downtime
This is particularly crucial for sectors with critical operations where downtime isn’t an option. In these situations, all changes made to a system must be carried out correctly and faults must be cleared without delay. Following advanced operator training, these changes could be made and issues resolved, without any delay or the need for outside assistance, which would usually require system downtime while the offsite engineer is on route. 

2 - Increase self-reliance 
Training operators to notice and understand alarms as well as having an awareness of the quick-fix options available, can reduce the need to seek external assistance for every issue that arises. In some cases, with the right knowledge, issues with plant performance can be simple to resolve. With our technical support, the number of remote fixes can be increased, leading to a more efficient operation.

If external assistance is needed, additional training could help the operator to accurately relay details of the problem to an engineer, who will then be able to triage the issue amongst their own workload and make sure sites that need assistance the most are tended to as soon as possible.

3 - Increase operational efficiency
Crucially, having a better understanding of plant equipment can allow staff to ensure systems always operate at an optimum level - streamlining operations and improving the level of output as well as profitability. 

4 - Cut environmental impact
Improving operational efficiency is an effective way to reduce the number of journeys made to site.  Likewise, reducing the need for external callouts will also help to cut down on travel and ultimately reduce the overall carbon footprint of a site.

5 - Equipping employees for the future
Giving employees the tools to better understand plant operations and equipment benefits them from a personal development perspective, but it can also equip them for the move towards digitalisation. For sites with or considering the installation of digital monitoring equipment like Hubgrade, providing a better understanding of the technologies will help operators to interpret the resultant system data, diagnostics and reporting, further enabling improvements in plant performance. 

Having the reassurance of a service and maintenance contract with VWT UK provides peace of mind that issues will be pre-empted wherever possible, and if they can’t be, then resolved quickly by highly qualified engineers. In addition, arming onsite operators with as much knowledge as possible can only benefit operations and site efficiency. 

For more information about VWT UK’s operator training or to request a session, please click here.