Home Team officers lauded for innovative training methods

They are among 25 trainers and training units that receive accolades at ceremony

- Caelyn Tan

He used to lug some 80kg of wood to and from his classes every month.

It was not the weight, but the bulkiness of the almost 3m-long wood pieces that bothered Second Warrant Officer (2WO) Mohammad Zaki As'at the most.

As a trainer at the Civil Defence Academy's Urban Search and Rescue Branch, the 45-year-old conducts courses that involve building shores. These are structures made with wood beams and planks to prop up and stabilise walls, windows and passageways in the event of an earthquake or building collapse, and can hold up more than 4,000kg each.

Hauling around and working with the unwieldy pieces of wood while demonstrating to trainees how to build the shores proved cumbersome.

To overcome this, 2WO Zaki came up with the idea of a model training kit, using pieces of wood and Velcro to build a miniaturised version of the shores, so trainees could understand what they were to do first before trying to build an actual shore for the course.

The models, which he developed within a year of being posted as a trainer at the academy in 2021, are five times smaller than the actual structures and weigh less than 5kg.