Kongsberg Maritime Debuts “Portable Classrooms”

Kongsberg Maritime has developed a new way to train its customers wherever they are in the world: the 'Portable Classroom', intended to be used at customer sites, Kongsberg Maritime Sites and onboard vessels. The 'Training Box' is at the core of the Portable Classroom concept. It is designed to be an easy to transport box equipped with a single remote control system (RCU) and the most common remote input/output (RIO) modules, which are interchangeable, depending on the type of equipment installed in the vessel to be trained for. Additionally, 10 fully loaded laptop PCs are included, to act as operator stations during training. "The box offers access to all the technical equipment and software required to arrange hands-on training for our customers worldwide," says Ingar Tveiten, one of the course instructors behind this new concept at Kongsberg Maritime. "With all the necessary tools available, we are able to improve the delivery and content of our training, which helps the customer get even more value out of the onboard equipment we supply." The first outing for the Portable Classroom was a one-week operator and technical training course in Integrated Automation Systems (IAS) for MaranGas in Athens, Greece. The participants were extremely enthusiastic about the new concept and the content of the course itself. Some of the comments received included: "It was great to train on the same kind of equipment as used onboard," and: "We weren't expecting to be able to practice on our own operator stations." "I think the Portable Classroom will give us the flexibility we have been striving to provide," says Ingar. "Getting closer to the customer is essential and we are now able to provide training to far more people than we have been able to in the past."