AIRAH recently donated a suite of valuable refrigeration simulation training equipment to the Grafton campus of the North Coast Institute of TAFE in New South Wales.

As part of its strategic aims, AIRAH aspires to “close the skills gap”, working alongside government and other providers to help fill the voids in formal training within the HVAC&R industry.

And by bestowing the valuable simulation equipment to the Electrotechnology teaching section of the North Coast Institute of TAFE, AIRAH did just that. In the process, the school received a major boost to its teaching capacity.

The simulators were left over from AIRAH’s ARC Assessment Program, which ran from 2007 to 2009. They are self-contained, demountable desktop training systems. One simulates a simple split-system air conditioner; the other simulates a basic commercial refrigeration unit. 

Included in the package of equipment donated were two DAR2001s, two laptops, one DAR2200, one DAR2300, one electrical resistance testing circuit board developed by Degem and AIRAH specifically for air conditioning and refrigeration, and five packing cases.   

“The great thing about these systems is their versatility,” says AIRAH chief operating officer Neil Cox, who handed over the equipment to Roy Hatfield and Greg Williams from the TAFEs. 

“They can be operated as required. Faults can be inserted, valve blockages simulated and the attendant impact on the system observed.”

Williams, who is an electrical and refrigeration teacher at the Grafton Campus, says the school is privileged to receive the donation. 

“We are absolutely delighted to receive this equipment, and are extremely grateful to AIRAH for choosing us as one of the recipients of these donations,” he says. “We have already found a multitude of uses for them and can integrate them seamlessly into our teaching day.

“The fact that they are demountable and pack neatly into custom-built carry cases is an unexpected, yet most welcome aside in a facility where space is a premium and many trades share the same teaching space.”

In 2007 Cox established and was director for the AIRAH ARC Assessment Program, which was partially funded by the federal government under the EPTLP (Experienced Persons Transitional Licence Program). It assisted over 300 tradesmen in more than 30 locations from Hobart to Cairns over a two-year period to gain the appropriate qualification to claim an ARC licence and continue to serve the industry.

The donation was the third recent occasion on which AIRAH had consigned refrigeration simulation training equipment to a TAFE desperately in need of it.

The other beneficiaries of such a bestowal have been Regency TAFE in South Australia and Skills Institute in Tasmania.

“AIRAH expended a huge amount of time and effort to develop a tool to conduct mobile recognition of prior learning assessments on experienced candidates,” Cox says. “When it comes down to it though, they are a modern, safe and engaging training tool.”

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