CESC has tied up with the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, to teach its engineers the latest in power distribution.

“The five-day course will be conducted by IIT’s electrical engineering department for our junior and middle-level distribution officers,” said Amitabha Sengupta, the executive director of CESC, administration.

The training of the first batch started on Monday with 20 distribution engineers, with experience between one and eight years, joining the residential course on the Kharagpur campus. Each participant will receive a certificate from the premier institute.

The programme consists of eight modules covering technical aspects of distribution engineering, creating awareness about the particular branch of engineering as well as introducing the participants to global developments in the field of power distribution.

“This is the first time that a utility-based continuing education programme is being undertaken by the institute in partnership with a corporate house,” said Sengupta.

According to him, this kind of corporate-academia joint initiative will give the young engineers an opportunity to interact with stalwarts in the field. “It will help them come up with engineering solutions relating to prevalent problems in power distributio,” felt Sengupta.

To attain the right balance between theory and practice, the course has been jointly designed by IIT professors and senior CESC officials. The course will also have CESC-specific case studies to make it more relevant.

The course will also cover soft skills. “Distribution is a people-intensive business. Apart from the employees, we have to deal with over 22 lakh customers. Thus, along with domain knowledge, we also felt the need to hone their soft skills,” said Sengupta.

Depending on the success of the programme, CESC plans to conduct three such training programmes in a year and will also consider similar training for the power generation wing.