The winners of the ESTA Awards of Excellence 2023 were announced on 20 April at an awards ceremony in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. Liebherr received an award in the Training category for a novel training concept. With a new generation of training offers, Liebherr provides target group-specific training for customers in the crane industry and beyond to support the continuous development of jobs in this industry. The Training category was newly introduced this year by ESTA (European association for the abnormal road transport and mobile crane rental industry) and, for the first time, an award was given for it to underline the importance of this topic.
With a variety of courses in different formats, Liebherr serves the relevant segments for crane operators, dispatchers and workshop personnel around the world. Liebherr’s aim is to better train crane industry employees and, in doing so, support safety and accident-free operations in the industry.
Christoph Kleiner, Managing Director Sales at Liebherr-Werk Ehingen GmbH, accepted the award and says: “For us, in addition to training our own employees, training our customers has always been an important component in connection with the safe and efficient use of our cranes while ensuring maximum availability. In recent years, we have added further learning methods, which we consistently used and expanded during the pandemic. These were also aimed at new target groups, not just crane drivers. Overall, training is also a key pillar of our business model, both in terms of presence in our division’s training centres worldwide, but also digitally within our MyLiebherr customer platform.”
Christoph Behmüller, head of the training department at Liebherr in Ehingen, adds: “Finding skilled workers and, at the same time, developing and retaining them is becoming increasingly more difficult. This is exactly where we want to support our customers in our long-standing partnership. Together we have thought about how we can properly support them in developing their employees. A new concept has been developed in this way. This allows us to offer our customers the possibility of training their employees from beginners to experts. Three areas of professional training have emerged: Mobile crane operators, dispatchers and workshop personnel.”
For each target group, Liebherr offers a digital e-learning course that provides a basic introduction to cranes. Through these e-learning courses, a uniform level of knowledge is achieved for the following courses. “This way, we support the development process from career changer to expert – optimally and individually. During practical training weeks in the training departments worldwide, crane class-specific equipment and controls can be studied in depth after successful completion of the e-learning courses. This means that the training groups are on the same level and are already able to exchange a lot of knowledge with each other,” says Behmüller.
Liebherr is thus creating a new standard in the crane industry: one that focusses on qualified personnel who are aware of the responsibility that comes with handling and operating mobile cranes. This advances the goal of zero accidents in the industry.
