There are times when a heavy equipment company must look at the painful reality of needing some specialized training before that company can be competitive. Whether that specialized training is needed for a few of your staff or an entire crew, ATS Specialized Training is designed to help you meet the challenge.

Associated Training Services can design the perfect training program that meets all the various requirements. Legalities, changing industry standards, unique operating environments, and customer requests all can be addressed by our instructors while maintaining the highest standards of quality and integrity.

These classes can be held at the Sun Prairie, Wisconsin location or at remote sites all over the country. Beginner-level or customized training can be provided in these areas and more:

• NCCCO Crane Operator Training, Testing, and Certification.
• NCCCO Rigger-1 & Signalperson Training, Testing, and Certification.
• OSHA Compliant Rigging & Signal Person Training, Testing, and Qualification.
• NCCER Heavy Equipment Training, Testing, and Qualification.
• Class-A CDL Commercial Driver Training, Testing, and Licensing.
• Credentials.

ATS is a nationally accredited, family-owned, private vocational school that has been providing professional training for over five decades. As the industries have changed, we have kept up with the changes. That means we can help you make the changes that keep your company competitive.

Enhance the safety consciousness of your workforce and increase productivity while fulfilling regulatory or insurance requirements by letting ATS provide specialized training. We cover a broad spectrum of subjects relating to the heavy equipment field and more.

Have you ever seen a professional heavy equipment operator dress wearing flip-flops while on the job? Probably not, because that shoe selection would be a huge safety violation. There’s a good reason professionals wear the protective gear you see when driving past a work site, and it’s because workers are safer when appropriately dressed for the job they actually do.

Personal Protective Gear for Heavy Equipment Operators

Those flip-flops are unsafe because they don’t protect the feet. A worksite that has heavy equipment is a work site that requires good work boots, usually with steel toes. These boots, along with good socks, are designed to stay on your feet and keep your mind on the job instead of your toes. Other ways to protect your body might vary depending on the type of industry:

• clothing that will keep you from getting caught in moving machinery parts
• gloves that keep your hands from slipping and also protect
• safety glasses that keep dust and other junk out of your eyes
• ear plugs or ear muffs that keep you from going deaf
• respirators or masks that keep silica or other junk out of your lungs
• hard hats that keep your skull from getting cracked
• reflective safety vests that keep you visible
• sunscreen that keeps you from getting skin cancer
• a water bottle that keeps you hydrated

Dress Appropriately

All this protective gear has horror stories behind it — stories of real heavy equipment operators who were injured or killed because they did not have that one thing to protect them. These sad stories are why ATS instructors are required to have National Credentials with NCCER (National Center for Construction Education & Research). This non-profit educational foundation has a mission — to foster a productive, safe, and sustainable workforce. Certifications like NCCER verify that the information being taught has research behind the rules. That protective gear might seem like a hassle, but it keeps you dressed for the job you actually do.

Sometimes the skilled trades, like heavy equipment operation, seem like an invisible career. The only guy who seems to be famous and blue-collar is Mike Rowe, the guy who has become famous for trying out dirty and unusual jobs on TV. But as Mike would say, “somebody’s gotta do it”, and think about what happens if nobody does that job?

Skilled Trades Have Permanent Physical Impact

In any skilled trade, the result of a job well done is a change in the surroundings somehow. With heavy equipment, that change is pretty obvious, but somehow society forgets that something like plumbing depends on somebody being able to dig a ditch. All the changes to the landscape that make life easier happen because somebody knows how to operate heavy equipment.

The big jobs that are done with big machinery are jobs that change the world. If you can do a job that changes your world, straighten up and stand tall because you make a big difference in a lot of lives.

Skilled Trade Professionals Have Credentials

The two national organizations that ATS works with to provide credentialing for the heavy equipment workforce are:

• NCCER — the National Center for Construction Education & Research
• NCCCO — the National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators

Being able to show a potential employer that you have these certifications shows that high standards have already been met in your training and that you have passed the tests required to show mastery of the skills required. As a result, these credentials are valued throughout the industries that rely on heavy equipment to get a job done.

If you are a skilled heavy equipment operator with the credentials to prove it, you can stand up taller in confidence that you are a valuable professional.

Moving earth and heavy debris around doesn’t seem like technology comes into play much, does it? After all, you are pushing dirt around far away from a computer on a desk. But today’s high-tech heavy equipment often has very sophisticated technological advantages the machinery of the past was not capable of accessing.

Global Positioning Systems (GPS) have been around for years. Most smartphones have them, and lots of people use their GPS to find the nearest restaurant or get directions to an unfamiliar address. Heavy equipment operators use a GPS to match the contours of the site to the designed plans. The system can be fairly simple, or incredibly intricate depending on what has been put into place.

GPS and related technology can track where machinery is located, tell a central monitor how fast it is going, monitor maintenance issues, and a host of other things. Many companies use high-tech stuff in their heavy equipment, and a good operator isn’t intimidated by it because it helps you do your job.

If your training school isn’t accredited by the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) you probably will not be getting recognition for your efforts, even if you learn the latest technological advances in heavy equipment operation. This is because employers recognize NCCER and respect its standards.

ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School holds National Credentials with NCCER and this gives our graduates that respect.

Whether it is the latest GPS technology or the latest thing being invented, ATS keeps up with what is happening in the industry and works that develop into our training. At the same time, we know that a lot of job sites will be using older equipment, so you get experience with the classics, too.

When you look at machinery like bulldozers, excavators and mobile cranes, they look very complex and hard to understand. Whilst the principles behind each machine is fairly basic, the components that go together to make, say, a mobile crane, are very complex. However, just like a car, you don’t need to know how it works under the hood, you just need to know how to operate from inside the cab. And that is fairly straightforward. Did you know that mobile crane operator training only takes three weeks? That’s all you need – three weeks.

Becoming a certified mobile crane operator does take a little longer. After all, you do have to be assessed before being certified. So let’s add another week for the certification process. In total, four weeks to become a certified mobile crane operator ready to start work. It may sound like a whirlwind training regime, however, it’s not. If it was, you would struggle to get through the certification process.

Actually, ATS Crane Operator Training Schools have one of the best reputations for delivering well trained graduates to industry. Our training is thorough and includes in-the-cab training and practice and classroom-based learning in areas such as workplace safety. Our training has been accredited through the National Center for Construction Education Research (NCCER) and our training schools are licensed in their respective states. Crane operator certification is provided through the National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators (NCCCO).

In short, our mobile crane operator training provides skills that are required by industry along with certification of those skills for those who pass the assessment process. Are you looking for a career change? Consider a career as a mobile crane operator. The pay is good, the work conditions great, and you can start in less than a month.