Advanced Snow Management kicks off with Core Principles

'I can say with confidence that it is a great training addition for the industry, with the Core Principles course providing fundamental concepts anyone working in snow should know.'

By Paul Vanderzon
As industry professionals, all of us in snow & ice realize the challenge of providing consistent, quality training to our operators and field managers. As a SIMA volunteer, I am excited to have played a role in taking this type of training a huge step forward by working on the Advanced Snow Management program. After a year of hard work creating content for the program, SIMA recently released the first two of the four certificate courses: Core Principles & Plowing Operations. As part of the stakeholder advisory group (SAG) that developed and tested the program, I can say with confidence that it is a great training addition for the industry, with the Core Principles course providing fundamental concepts anyone working in snow should know.

Core Principles is a prerequisite for all courses in the Advanced Snow Management program. It can be used to prepare individuals for the other three courses - Plowing Operations, Sidewalk Operations and Ice Management - or as a stand-alone training course for operations personnel. It can provide introductory training to new employees, refresher training for current employees, or serve as the knowledge base for anyone working toward completing all four certificates to obtain the Advanced Snow Manager (ASM) designation.

The ASM courses will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week online at SIMA's Resource 24/7 Training Center. All courses are self-paced and end with quiz to assess the knowledge learned. Once the quiz is successfully completed, the employee will receive an official certificate from SIMA. Anyone who completes all four courses can use the ASM designation. SIMA and the SAG team are hard at work building the final two certificate courses, and we expect to have all four courses available in early 2014.

Thank you to the other members of the stakeholder advisory group who helped create Core Principles: Teri Meredith, Ian Ashby and Shay Leon. Visit www.sima.org/resources for more information or to purchase.

Paul Vanderzon owns Amenagements Paysagers Vanderzon Inc., in St. Bruno, Quebec, and is a member of the Stakeholder Advisory Group and SIMA Board of Directors.