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Pocket Primer Series
Nearly fourteen years ago, ComTrain began to document the tasks, tools and skills demanded in the construction, maintenance and inspection of steel communication towers. Analysis of the requirements identified twelve separate trade skills demanded, and four professions requiring partial knowledge. Surveying, excavation, concrete & rebar work, steel erection, rigging, electrical, antennas & lines (including moderate education in RF Engineering), welding, painting, fencing, roofing and carpentry are the 12 industries involved in building towers. Electronic Engineers, Structural Engineers, RF Engineers and people with Physics knowledge are involved. Additional research disclosed little or no documentation of standards in measurement of skill levels of tower workers. Little or no formal training existed and the affect on the industry was difficulty in measuring the value and expectation of the workers. Additionally, with no clear objective, the process of training and developing new workers was inconsistent.
While attempting to develop training materials for workers, ComTrain produced the “Basic Tower Construction” textbook and began delivering formal classes. Over the years, students have increasingly demonstrated the need for the huge amount of material to be compartmentalized into specific sections.
Additional research, additions to available tools and materials and more elaborate text writing made it clear that some sectioning of the subjects was needed. Changes in the industry, and increased specialization of specific tasks within the field, have also suggested that not all tower workers need to study all areas of the “turn key” construction process, or to the same degree of detail.
Over the years, ComTrain instructors found the need to supplement the formal text book with smaller handbooks. One of these handbooks, “Knot Knuts”, became so popular that students began to purchase copies for in-house training. These early rough works were simple single-subject publications that, although handy, were incomplete. Editing the workbooks led to the concept of the “Pocket Primers”. The Primers are easily updated which keeps the prices low, and each Primer addresses only a specific subject. The Pocket Primers are compact in size for on-site referencing.
In retrospect, the first ComTrain text in the Pocket Primer Series was the “Tower Riggers Dictionary”. At the time of the first edition of this work, the full concept of pocket references for our industry was unborn. This dictionary is a power-packed booklet with almost 200 pages of illustrations and definitions. ComTrain’s Pocket Primer Series derives from the original “Basic Tower Construction” text and includes multiple sub-divisions of major categories of skills. The most-demanded training material over the years has been related to “Tower Rigging”. Each Pocket Primer will be sub-category identified as to the overall topic, i.e., “Rigging Section”, “Surveying and Soil Testing”, “Basic Electricity and Lighting”, etc., and will be numbered by Vol. as to its relative importance to more complex topics within the section. For example: Tower Rigging (Rigging Section) includes ropes, block and tackle techniques, winch and crane operation, Jin Pole techniques, tools and hardware. The subject of block and tackle requires the student to understand rope, the most basic tool; so, rope texts are early (lower-numbered) volumes. This structure will hopefully allow students and teachers to select the correct material to work with as the training progresses.
Consider an example of teaching tower rigging to your crews. Your company does light antenna and line work. You maintain rigging equipment using soft line, capstans and soft rope hardware. Where do you begin? We suggest you begin with Vol. 1 from the rigging section of the Pocket Primer Series. This is “Soft Rope, Knots and Capstans”. Since you do not use or provide wire rope and winch operations, you next would use Vol. 3, “Rigging, Block and Tackle”. Later your company expands to heavier construction and elaborate man-riding. At this point you may add Vol. 2 from the rigging section (“Wire Rope and Winch”) to your training tools.
Tower Foundations, Design & Construction was our previous edition added to
the mix,addressing issues
such as soils, rebar, excavations, inspections & checks, and much more.
We have just completed SURVEYING SKILLS FOR TOWER WORKERS. Please see our
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