New Platform, New Tools: How Training Gets Your Team From Stuck to Launched

The teams that come to us for training typically aren't new businesses just starting to explore engineering services. They're established engineering firms doing great work across multiple scopes and disciplines, and that reputation is how they landed a new opportunity. Whether it's a new client, a new scope, or a bid they'd been chasing. Now they have to learn Katapult Pro. No matter how talented the team, getting up to speed in a new system when deliverables are due yesterday is a tall order.

We interviewed Trey Sobiech, who has spent about four years running training and certification at Katapult, and he set the scene for how Katapult Pro training supports teams who end up in this spot.

https://youtu.be/NlLmUNW0YCk

When Excitement Turns Into Obligation

Winning the work feels great. Opening the new platform for the first time feels great too, for about a week.

Then the project schedule starts moving. "As teams get into the platform and start playing around with the tools, that excitement starts to turn into deadlines and deliverable requirements and just hurdles that have to be crossed," Trey says. The throughput targets are real, the quality bar is set by someone else's standards, and the team is learning the software in the gaps between billable hours.

Excellent engineers make this harder on themselves in a specific way: they bootstrap. Figuring things out independently is the instinct that made them good at the job, so they apply it to the new platform too. Some of that works. But a platform this configurable has a long tail of capability, and a team teaching itself doesn't know what it doesn't know. Tools sit unused. Workarounds calcify into the workflow. The team is moving, but slower than the deadline needs them to move, and the gap grows quietly.

One path is continuing in the pain and hoping it gets better. The other is bringing in help, which is where Trey's team comes in.

The Process Underneath Every Training Format

We offer several training formats: guided virtual sessions, the OSP Field Bootcamp and Office Apprenticeship in Dillsburg, on-site training built around your projects, and self-paced training that's available to every user at no cost. The format is a logistics decision. Trey's process underneath is the same three steps regardless of which route you pick.

Start with where you actually are. Before anyone teaches anything, the first work is diagnostic. "First just understanding where you're at, what problems you are facing, kind of running some diagnostics," is how Trey describes it. What does the deliverable need to look like? Where is the team getting stuck today? A training built on assumptions about your workflow wastes the hours you're paying for.

Learn the tools as they're meant to work. The platform does a lot out of the box, and most struggling teams are underusing what's already in front of them. This step is awareness and mechanics: what's available, how it's used well, and where the efficient path runs. For teams newer to the industry itself, this is also where OSP fundamentals get woven into the software training rather than assumed.

Map it to your scope of work. This is the step bootstrapping teams almost never reach on their own. Generic proficiency isn't the goal; your deliverable is. The last stretch of every training adapts the tools to your specific outputs, your client's standards, and the way your field and office teams actually hand work to each other. It's the difference between knowing the software and running your business on it.

The endpoint is certification, which puts your team in the same network of certified users and vendors that pole owners and primes reference when they're deciding who to trust with work.

Why We're Able to Help

Katapult has been doing OSP engineering work since 1991, and our services team still serves utility and telecommunication attachers in our own backyard. We were the first team that had to figure out how to make this software a competitive advantage on real projects with real deadlines, which means we hit the traps first, and we still hit new ones as the work keeps changing.

"The reason Katapult is able to help is because the tools have to work for us. Our own internal team uses these tools," Trey says. "If the tools can work for us, they can work for everybody."

Trey isn't reading from a curriculum someone else wrote. He's teaching a workflow our own teams run every day, which is why the advice comes out specific: not "explore the annotation tools" but "here's the move that saves your photo team an hour per job." We've had the failures already. Training exists so your team can have the success without repeating them.

Getting Launched Beats Getting By

The firms that thrive on new scopes aren't the ones that avoided the learning curve. They're the ones that compressed it on purpose, early, before the workarounds hardened and the deadline pressure turned into deliverable problems.

If your team is heading into Katapult Pro for the first time, or you've been in the platform for a while and suspect you're only using half of it, that's exactly the conversation Trey's team is built for. Tell us where you are and what the work needs to look like, and we'll match the format to your team.

Schedule a meeting with our team to talk through training and certification for your crew.

Frequently Asked Questions About Katapult Pro Training

What training formats does Katapult offer?

Guided virtual sessions, the OSP Field Bootcamp and Office Apprenticeship hosted in Dillsburg, PA, on-site training where our expert travels to your team, and self-paced training available to every user at no cost. Every format follows the same process: assess where your team is, build proficiency in the tools, then adapt them to your specific scope of work.

How do we pick the right format for our team?

It depends on team size, experience level, and timing. A small group of newer field technicians often gets the most from the structured Bootcamp setting, while a whole team that needs to train on its own projects and models is usually a fit for on-site. Self-paced works well for teams that want to move on their own schedule or test the waters first.

What does certification get us?

Certification verifies your team's proficiency in the Katapult Pro field or office workflow and places your company in the certified vendor network that pole owners and primes reference when sourcing work.

We've been using Katapult Pro for a while. Is training still relevant?

Yes, and it's another one of the most common engagements. Teams that bootstrapped their way in are usually underusing the platform, and a diagnostic pass often surfaces tools and configurations that change throughput without changing headcount.

Does training cover the industry, or just the software?

Both where needed. For teams newer to OSP work, fundamentals like make ready rules and field practices get built into the training rather than assumed, so newer staff learn the why alongside the how.