In February 2010, a team of world-class instructors and about 60 participants from all over the United States and Canada traveled to Midland, Texas to attend TOMCAT’s Hoist and Truss workshop or the Rigging and Truss workshop. The Hoist and Truss workshop featured the disassembly and reassembly of a one ton Lodestar, a Prostar as well as advanced troubleshooting with Dave Carmack of Columbus McKinnon.  Dave Sowa (ETCP certified electrician and formerly of TOMCAT USA, Inc.) led a discussion on control systems and conducted demonstrations of load testing.  Instruction was rounded out by Dana Bartholomew of Fisher Technical Services, Inc. who gave instruction and demonstrations on automation.

G. Anthony Phillips, of RigRider Rigging Services and ETCP certified rigger and instructor taught safe rigging practices and principles while Morgan Neff gave instruction on fall protection practices and equipment.  Participants also had the opportunity to put those principles into practice during a session with a TOMCAT ground support system.

Both workshops included a full day of truss instruction with TOMCAT USA, Inc.’s Keith Bohn and Will Todd. The class included beginning and advanced concepts in truss usage, including: grid design, applying loads, ground support system considerations, structural design concepts, inspection techniques.  The day culminated with one of the most popular features of the workshop: live destruction of truss.

In addition to four days of highly informative classes, the students were treated to dinner each night – concluding with the ever-popular “factory night” at TOMCAT USA, Inc.’s headquarters featuring tours, demonstrations and a graduation ceremony.

Derek Seal with Majestic Productions had a lot of good things to say about the training, “The classes were extremely informative and the instructors were great.  We were able to learn from them and also get the chance to learn some things on our own due to the amount of hands on experience we got this past week.”

If you missed the 2010 February workshops, TOMCAT will soon make an announcement regarding dates for 2011.