Our Trainees spent the last week of August undergoing their forklift operation instruction at the Irish School of Motoring Forklift Training Centre in Tallaght, Co. Dublin.
Operating a forklift is a specialised skill that requires a high level of health and safety awareness. ISM’s five-day training courses are aimed at providing participants with the knowledge and technical skills to operate a forklift in a safe and competent manner as prescribed in the Health and Safety Code of Practice.
The course started with some basic classroom instruction but is it primarily practical in its delivery making it instantly relatable and applicable to real-world, warehouse-type environments.
Trainees had the opportunity to master the operation of counter-balance forklift trucks, reach forklift trucks and ‒ complementing their instruction on handling the manual pallet jacks as used in Speedpak ‒ power pallet jacks.
As most of the Trainees had never operated a forklift before, they all agreed that the health and safety training, undertaken since commencing the programme, had been a great help in providing context and in helping to familiarise trainees with a broader warehousing and industrial operations.
Meanwhile, the ‘away-from-base’ training provided a different workplace dynamic that was a bonding experience for the entire team and an important further step towards transitioning to a new workplace.