Mining careers at fingertips: NORCAT shows appreciation for help in developing Smart Wallet app for mine careers.

• Author: McKinley, Karen
• Position: TRAINING & EDUCATION

Fast access to safety qualifications, credentials, and even job postings. There's an app for that.

NORCAT showed their appreciation to the Ontario Trillium Foundation on Aug. 22 in funding a youth career app to help students from high school to new post-secondary and trades graduates find resources they need to jumpstart a career in mining.

Titled the "Safety Wallet," it is currently available for download on Google Play and the iStore to download to phones.

"Safety Wallet is a mobile tool with a variety of purposes," said Don Duval, CEO of NORCAT.

"It can allow access to training records for said individual using the app. It can be a compliance tool, whereby you have a worker in the field and someone is doing an audit to validate the workers' training records. You can use the Safety Wallet to scan that individual's NORCAT card to ensure they have the right credentials to be on that site."

The other reason for the event at NORCAT was to announce the app has a resource section that shows users the career options open to them in the mining industry.

This is important, Duval said, with the impending worker shortage looming over the industry. The app would help young people from as early as high school to choose a mining career, access resources to pursue it, and eventually find a job, all from their phones.

The app is especially timely, he said, as so many young people use their phones and apps to do anything. The technology fits well with their current lifestyle and brings all the information they need right to their hands.

"So many youth are already fully immersed in this technology, so why not put it where they can see it?" he said.

"A lot of youth...