Kongsberg Digital Advances ‘Simulation as a Service’ with BCIT

Initially, Kongsberg Digital will focus on enabling students at BCIT’s School of Energy to use the K-Sim Engine Thermal Power Plant (TPP) simulator for industrial/utilities engineers, by giving them access to the simulator on their own devices. However, the train anytime and anywhere strategy is already set to improve and extend the use of simulation in power engineering training.

In addition to the K-Sim Engine TPP, the first maritime engine room simulators will soon be running in the Kognifai cloud environment, extending the K-Sim product offering from traditional classroom and full-mission simulators to include self-study training where students can use their own computers to access high quality, simulation-based courses. With cloud-based training, instructors can assign exercises to students who can complete them anytime and anywhere. The training provider can complement traditional simulator training in the center with training beyond physical confines and opening hours.

The benefits of cloud-based training using high-quality simulators that are easily accessed and managed by instructors and students through a web portal, are numerous. Through integration of the K-Sim platform with Kognifai, Kongsberg Digital focuses on convenience and ease of use for all users to ensure that students have a more complete and flexible platform to reach their training objectives. Additionally, as the solution is provided as a service, the cost is directly related to the usage, and providers only pay for licenses that are used. The cloud-based software licenses can for example be integrated within course fees, making the cost-management risk to the training provider virtually zero.

Through cloud-based training provision, KONGSBERG customers are empowered to introduce more cost-effective packages for their customers while maximizing and creating new revenue streams. Kognifai enables portfolios of exercises to be downloaded and shared within the training organization. Ultimately, this ability to share content will make exercises of higher quality available to the students.

The BCIT Marine Campus in North Vancouver has been a KONGSBERG customer since the mid-1990s. The Industrial and Mechanical Trades division of the BCIT School of Energy, located at the main Burnaby Campus, has been a customer since 2013 and will take the initial lead in offering training anytime and anywhere with K-Sim and Kognifai. BCIT is already an innovator in distance learning and has a wide range of online course offerings available to its extensive student body. The ability to provide real-time Thermal Power Plant (TPP) training with Kognifai allows the institute to extend parts of its Power Engineering program outside the classroom, the campus and indeed the province in a completely new way. BCIT expects to service the training requirements of a wide range of power engineers, from introductory level and fourth class power engineering students all the way to first class engineers and the industrial training market, with the same certification online as on site.

“We have been providing distance learning services for many years so appreciate the benefits for both the market and our instructors,” said Brian Buckley, Associate Dean of Industrial and Mechanical Trades, School of Energy at the BCIT Burnaby Campus. “The Kognifai-based K-Sim Engine Thermal Power Plant simulator represents a digital disruption that we see as benefiting BCIT and our customers, both within our mainstream power engineering programs and our industrial activity out in the field. While distance learning is not new, the ability to run a fully dynamic thermal power plant in real time from the cloud certainly is. In an instant, we now have the ability to extend our classroom beyond the confines of our Burnaby campus for power engineering without instructors needing to leave the premises. Our clients benefit from being able to provide employees with the ability to train at their convenience, at designated times or after hours, removing the need to take the workforce out of regular operations for extended periods of time for training.”

  

“KONGSBERG staff have worked hard to deliver on the training anytime and anywhere commitment we made during our global user conference in September 2017,” said Tone-Merete Hansen Senior Vice President, Maritime Simulation, Kongsberg Digital. “We are now at a stage where K-Sim and Kognifai are ready to break down the barrier of cloud-based simulation for training providers in maritime and industrial segments. We are building the simulation products and services our customers require to be successful in the context of digital transformation.”