Inveneo is Increasing Work-at-Height Safety with Petzl Foundation
- Posted by Inveneo on June 27, 2012 in the categories: News
In 2011, the Petzl Foundation hosted Andris Bjornson, Inveneo’s Chief Technology Officer, and Jen Overgaag, Senior Project Engineer, and in 2012, Matt Crum, Sam Perales, and Eyleen Chou, Inveneo Project Engineers, for a Tower Access and Rescue train-the-trainer course at the Petzl America headquarters in Utah. This course was designed to provide invaluable hands-on training for Inveneo staff and enabled Inveneo to develop a training curriculum and a safety equipment kit with Petzl’s work-at-height safety experts.
These skills and $10,000 in donated Petzl tools will be used to train and kit our extended Inveneo team and our in-country technology partners, helping them deploy safe practices in configuring broadband Internet networks on communication towers in the developing world. Often, setting up these networks involves large-scale tower climbing to position equipment correctly. Our entrepreneurs, though not new to technology, are often new to climbing or have haven’t formally learned safety skills. These trainings are critical to the safe set-up and delivery of our broadband networks, and we proud to share these invaluable skills with others.
Ronald, an apprentice engineer, during a Haiti training
Based on the Petzl training, Inveneo implemented two trainings in Haiti and trainings in Eldoret and Nairobi, Kenya. In Haiti, where we are implementing the Haiti Rural Broadband Network, communications technicians were anxious to learn safe climbing techniques and were very interested in trusted climbing equipment. Inveneo’s Haitian partner, Transversal, continues to use the training and equipment they received on a daily basis as they roll out and maintain remote tower sites.
As we move forward in 2012, Inveneo will be expanding our work on broadband networks in East Africa. The investment in the Petzl-Inveneo training will continue to provide security, confidence, and dividends in many countries and for many people.
