Students in the Heavy Equipment program at Northwest Iowa Community College are benefitting from the donation by Leica Geosystems of its PowerGrade 3D machine control system.

Leica Geosystems recently entered into a multifaceted partnership with Northwest Iowa Community College in Sheldon, Iowa, in which the company donated a PowerGrade 3D machine control system for use in the NCC Heavy Equipment program.

The Leica Geosystems PowerGrade 3D machine control system, installed in the program’s John Deere 670D grader, works in tandem with a Leica Geosystems PowerBox GNSS base station donated by Titan Machinery — a dealer of Case equipment and Leica Geosystems machine control technology. In addition, Leica Geosystems will donate a PowerGrade 3D Touch Screen GPS global positioning and guidance system to assist students with developing critical skills for entering a challenging job market.

"We are excited to be able to use state-of-the-art machine control technology provided by Leica Geosystems to train our students, and hope that in the future every piece of NCC’s equipment can be upgraded to have this type of technology," said Roger Solberg, lead instructor for the NCC Heavy Equipment program.

Nick Guadagnoli, product marketing manager, North American Leica Geosystems Machine Control Division, said that the company is exploring ways that NCC can serve as a new product development and testing site as well as for training of Leica Geosystems employees and customers.

Leica Geosystems is based in Heerbrugg, Switzerland.