The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association (LEEA) is proud to announce ITI as the sponsor of the new Innovation Award Showcase event at LiftEx 2019, in addition to the 2019 award category itself. Christina Lanham, Managing Director of ITI UK, will be presenting the winner at the LEEA Awards 2019 Dinner on 13 November in Milton Keynes. 

The Innovation Award Showcase takes place during Day One of LiftEx 2019 in a dedicated area of the show floor. It will be home to demonstrations and presentations from the Innovation Award finalists pitching their solutions for votes from visitors, which means it will be the place to see cutting edge innovations for the industry. LiftEx visitors can cast their votes on the day, which will be added to those of the judges, and the winner will be announced that evening at the prestigious LEEA Awards. 

ITI won the Innovation category at the LEEA Awards 2018 with its VR (Virtual Reality) crane simulation system. The ITI VR Crane Simulation Library touts over 1,000 hours of content across seven crane models. With dozens of organisations such as Bechtel, Mammoet and General Electric counted among its community of subscribers, ITI VR is one of the fastest growing crane simulation solutions in the world. “We were honoured to win the award last year and glad that LEEA has a category highlighting innovative solutions for the lifting industry,” says Lanham. “This year, we wanted to help LEEA provide an opportunity for another organisation to be recognised for the efforts they are making to improve the industry.

“I would encourage companies tackling our industry’s challenges in new, and value-creating ways, to invest in the innovation award process and showcase this year at LiftEx.”

For over 30 years ITI has provided workforce development solutions for organisations conducting load handling activities. ITI solutions include instructor-led training services, VR simulations, online learning and mobile applications. In March 2019 ITI set up an office in Birmingham, UK  – its first office in Europe.

The ITI VR Crane Simulation Library was officially launched in March 2017, at CONEXPO in Las Vegas.

“We had looked at traditional simulators but hadn’t found one we really wanted to use ourselves. So we partnered with Serious Labs to develop a solution with the VR technology available now.”

The result is a VR headset that fully immerses the user into a crane cab, allowing them to run through a myriad of training scenarios – from a novice operator to complex situations.

“The goal is to provide our customers with an option to help train their newer operators, provide their existing operators additional ‘seat time’ – which can be very expensive in a regular crane as well as taking it out of production – and to offer an assessment tool,” concludes Lanham, adding that VR also gives a risk-free, safer means of training. “If an operator messes up terribly there will be no need to make expensive repairs – all you have to do is hit the reset button.”