Today’s trainee is Rory, and it's his very first time operating a ship-to-shore crane. Yet, in gusting 40mph winds in a cab 53 metres from the Liverpool quayside, he's already moved five stacks of 40ft containers from a mega-ship sitting in the River Mersey to a waiting trailer below on the new £400m Liverpool2 container terminal.
Okay, Rory might have been a bit slow and made a few mistakes, but that doesn't matter because he isn't actually perched 53 metres in the air, nor is he unloading one of the world's biggest container ships.
He is in fact sitting in a crane simulator on the estate of the Port of Liverpool, about to embark on an intensive 14 day training course, which once completed will allow him to operate the newly built ZPMC cranes at the new terminal. When Peel Ports, owners and operators of the Port of Liverpool, chose to build a new container terminal capable of handling the world's biggest ships, it also invested heavily in the facilities it uses to train its crane operatives.