New European training centre in Norway

The move in to the new Rolls-Royce Technology & Training Centre, Ålesund in Norway, is almost complete. The primary goal is to provide customers with familiarisation and technical training for a broad range of Rolls-Royce equipment in a modern central location. This will now form the head office for all of the Rolls-Royce Marine training centres worldwide.

Located in the heart of the Norwegian maritime cluster in Ålesund, within the University area of the city, the new Rolls- Royce training centre occupies over 3,000m² on two floors of a brand new building. The centre is ready to receive and train customers, while the official opening takes place, later this year.

“The new centre enables us to provide customised and tailored training that focuses on the customer’s needs and demands, and also fulfills our own service engineer’s training needs”, says Knut Johan Rønningen, VP customer training. The training will be done in different sized groups and will normally last from two to three days, up to two weeks.

Around 5,000 man-days of training is expected per year. The main attraction is a state-of-the-artsimulator, a 140m² replica of an offshore vessel bridge with 3600 field of vision. This includes a Rolls-Royce winch operating system that can be programmed to simulate all aspects of vessel operation, as well as many more scenarios that would be impossible to train for on board, for example, a total ship power black-out. In addition, simulator domes are installed complete with LCD screens.

Realistic training examples of equipment are housed on the 800m² ground floor workshop area, including engine sub-assemblies, steering gears, waterjets, thrusters and deck machinery. Previously, product training was performed at the production sites but now everything is gathered in one place. This gives a better overview of the totality.

 When fully operational, the centre will have around 15 full-time employees.