// New Direction for Engineer Officer Training
By SQNLDR Trev Hammond
For the last 16 years, Engineer Officer Training (EOT) has been delivered at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.
As a result of an internal review into EOT requirements, 01 February 2010 will mark the commencement of a new, much improved, training regime, which will be undertaken at Royal New Zealand Air Force Base Woodbourne.
In September 2007 Commander Logistics Group Air Force commissioned the Engineer Training Three (ENTRAIN III) project to review EOT. The aim of this project was to ensure the RNZAF was providing the most effective training for engineering officers and confirm that training was aligned with workplace requirements. After a lengthy analysis, which involved the vast majority of engineers in the RNZAF, significant change for EOT was set about. The result has seen a fundamental shift into how, what, when and where EOT will be delivered.
The results of the ENTRAIN III review are now presented as a new singular EOT course, which will take the form of generic pre-employment training and replace the existing Engineer Officer Management Course and Engineer Officer Training Course. The new training has been designed to better meet an engineer’s needs, both in course content and the timing of its delivery.
Engineers will now be provided with both theoretical and practical training which will allow them to better deal with the problems and issues they will face in the workplace on a daily basis. The course will be approximately 43 weeks in duration and will be delivered jointly by the RNZAF and the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) at Base Woodbourne, using Ground Training Wing facilities.
Associated with this change in training has been a significant reduction in the costs for EOT. The Logistics branch has been able to secure training that will provide better prepared engineers at the workforce, more quickly, and for less.
An additional benefit of the ENTRAIN III review has been the development of specific job descriptions for approximately 80 engineer positions. These job descriptions provide a valuable tool for individuals at the coalface to fully appreciate the depth and breadth of their roles as professional engineers.
These detailed job descriptions have also provided an opportunity to identify and justify additional specialist training requirements related to each position. This will give us the opportunity to deliver additional training on a just-in-time basis and will ensure our engineers are well prepared, in advance, for the demanding specialist elements of their roles. Engineering Officer training will thus be able to be tailored and more aligned to specific workplace requirements. Furthermore, as this is an RNZAF owned training course, should workplace requirements change, the training can be easily amended to suit.
As ENTRAIN III draws to a conclusion, I acknowledge the efforts of all engineers who have contributed to project outputs. RNZAF engineers have actively helped to mould the future of engineer training and ensured that air operations will continue to be effectively supported as we enter a new phase of aerospace technologies.