There has been two secondees from USN to RWE Power AG, Cologne, Germany till now.

TARG member Associate Professor Steve and master’s student Hasan from the Department of Maritime Operations explored various aspects of process industry through a closer look into RWE facilities including lignite coal mines, power plants and their training facilities.

RWE trains their employees both in-house and through KWS, a third-party training provider as well. Power generation plants as a form of process industry must ensure safe and efficient operation with an aim of zero accidents. Keeping this in mind, the control room operators from power plants and the operators of bucketwheel excavators of coal mines receive extensive training through 1-on-1 simulators, VR headsets, online training platform (Moodle, Panono) and Train the Trainer (T@T) program at multiple RWE premises and on KWS campus at Essen.

The multidimensional training initiative pays off according to the manager of RWE technical training department, Mr. Wilhelm Stock.

Both secondments were packed with site visits, document reviews, Q&A sessions with office managers, educators and control room operators. The goal was to explore commonalities of human engagement through knowledge sharing in different complex socio-technical systems and use the derived data in refining the methods and procedures to achieve optimized solutions for both the maritime and the process industry. TARG looks forward to more secondments under the same work package in coming months.