Honeywell Life Safety Opens Texas Training Center
Company executives christened a gleaming new Training & Customer Experience Center where workers can get hands-on experience with confined space entry and rescue, communication tower climbing/rescue, servicing a wind energy nacelle, installing and using fall anchorages on a residential roof, and rescuing a co-worker from an oil rig’s catwalk and pipe rack.
Honeywell Life Safety executives cut the ribbon on a beautifully designed Training & Customer Experience Center on Sept. 18, welcoming hundreds of customers and media representatives to tour the 30,000-square-foot facility in Pasadena, Texas. Those in attendance enjoyed Texas BBQ and a three-piece Texas swing band's music, and everyone was invited to try on and then order a free pair of Muck or Oliver boots.
The $3 million facility includes simulated confined space, construction, heavy metal fabrication, oil & gas, emergency responder, and utilities/energy environments that illustrate the full spectrum of products offered by three HLS units--Honeywell Safety Products, Honeywell Fire Systems, and Honeywell Gas and Flame Detection--for all of those industries.
The training gym has 40-foot ceilings, and there are classrooms, meeting rooms, and a "vision room" where the company encourages customers to brainstorm about their safety challenges and possible solutions. It's a unique facility that already is booked through June 2014, said Mark Levy, Honeywell Life Safety's president. He said the location was chosen because it's in the center of the refineries and energy and petrochemical industries located in and around Houston, which is a major hub for clients in Latin America, as well.
"Having it centrally located here in the region, the response has been overwhelming. We want to be where we're needed, and this is it," Levy said. "This is the heartland of the oil and gas and industrial area, it all either originates in Houston or is blessed by Houston and the whole oil and gas and chemical industries. This is the crossroads of this world," which is concentrated within a 50-mile radius of the new facility, he continued. "We hit a sweet spot. We'll be here for the long haul." Levy said there's nothing else like it within Honeywell or anywhere else.
The center can accommodate small classes of 10-12 students, classes of 30-40, and up to 125 in a lecture hall. While building it took about two and half years from conception to completion, the facility is the crown jewel in the Honeywell Safety Institute, an education and training initiative that Levy and several colleagues--including Honeywell Safety Products President Jack Boss and Carl Johnson, president of Honeywell Analytics Global--announced just three months ago during ASSE's Safety 2013 conference. Asked how the training facility fits into the Honeywell Safety Institute, Levy replied, "This is the megacenter now. This is the mother ship, so to speak."
He said the Honeywell recognizes there is an urgent need for "heightened safety equipment and training to ensure worker safety improves," both in the United States and around the world.