Swift Celebrates Tech Excellence With SwiftTech Competition
At the SwiftTech competition, technicians were given simulated problems to troubleshoot and solve within a set time limit. Photos: Steven Martinez
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At the SwiftTech competition, technicians were given simulated problems to troubleshoot and solve within a set time limit. Photos: Steven Martinez
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A palpable sense of excitement and anxiety was in the air at Swift Transportation’s sprawling complex on the outskirts of Phoenix last month, as technicians showed off their skills in the annual SwiftTech technician competition. The competition pits maintenance personnel against each other in timed troubleshooting trials, not unlike the American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council SuperTech competition. But Swift is taking it a step further.
Planning for the event starts six months ahead of time, explained Angel Chavez, director of shop training operations and compliance. Chavez has been at Swift for more than a decade, and the SwiftTech competition is, in part, his brainchild.
Each technician is given a truck with a pre-determined problem and tasked with identifying and troubleshooting the problem to the satisfaction of an on-the-spot judge. A bullhorn sounds at the end of each timed event to alert participants that time’s up. A complicated schedule indicates which technicians should be at which station, at what time.
Chavez, a technician before moving into his role as head of training at Swift, explained that sometimes a really good technician can get lost in the world of test scores. Some employees might have an intuitive ability to understand a maintenance problem but have a harder time explaining it on pen and paper.
So instead of relying solely on test scores, Swift allows the maintenance directors at each terminal to choose who they want to compete in SwiftTech. This allows somebody who isn’t the absolute best test taker to have a shot at competing based on the director’s knowledge of his or her actual work.
This year the competition was broadened to include not just tractor technicians, but also trailer techs, tire techs, and …Read the rest of this story
