In response, Vermeer unveiled its first HDD Circuit training in February, and invited Equipment World to visit its second class in March. The company is betting that contractors will not only pay the $4,000-per-student cost (see sidebar, “HDD Circuit basics” on page 54), but that they’d also be willing to be short on personnel for two full weeks while they trained.
The two weeks were a bare minimum to convey what Vermeer felt needed to be taught, Bokhoven says: “It’s more than just knowing how to flip switches and turn rod. We didn’t just want to teach people how to run a drill. We want to teach them how to be a driller.”
The resulting training course takes a full immersion approach that includes both classroom and field, all of which takes place at Vermeer headquarters in Pella, Iowa. For example, after learning safety and drilling fundamentals, students then travel a short distance to a field to practice what they’ve just learned. Each eight-member class is divided into teams of two, one on the drill and one on the locator. As the training progresses, each team member will put in equal time on each position.
At each day’s end, there’s homework. Instructors give students the parameters of the next morning’s job – bore length, what utilities cross the drill path and where and how deep, and any other obstacles they’ll need to navigate. Using a laminated sheet, each team of two is asked to create a bore plan. “The next day, they’ll drill their bore plan,” Bokhoven says, “and at the end of the day, they will have data logged the bore all the way through and will know how close to their plan they actually were.”
“The laminated bore plan is probably one of the biggest training tools we’ve used,” says Dan Vroom, customer training lead. “Most of them have never used a bore plan; they just figure it out on the job.”
