You have decided you want to set up an internal training room or rooms and you will possibly use internal or external training resources to deliver your training.  You know want to start thinking about the options that might be available to you to kit out your training room for the period you will need it to be available for.

What equipment would I need?

• Training, Trainer and spare laptop or desktops and monitors
• Network Cables
• USB keyboard
• USB mouse
• network switch
• Extension leads with surge protectors
• desks
• office chairs
• operating system and software
• list of computer logins and passwords
• projector and projector screen or large television and television stand

How long will my training rooms be required?

There are many things to consider including:

• Will everybody in the business go live on day one or are you planning a more phased approach
• Will the business be able to cope with releasing the numbers required for each course to minimize the number of weeks the training will need to take place for to ensure everybody gets training in time
• Can some people get trained after you have gone live?
• How long will each training course be?

The amount of time a delegate will retain their new knowledge without using the new system in earnest is limited.  You probably don’t want to start the bulk of your internal staff training until six weeks before you expect to go live with your new software.

There are some exceptions to this rule for example:

• You may want your training room up and running to train your subject matter experts
• You may want your training room up and running to train your super users
• You may want your training room up and running to train your internal test team
• You may want your training room up and running to train your User Acceptance Testers

Can I use existing desktops, monitors or laptops:

Using your own laptops option:

• Do most of the company use work laptops.
• Could they bring their laptops to their training course?
• Would the software they are being trained in be already installed on their laptop:
• If not could they install it before their training or could they easily bring it to their IT department for installing before their course?  Consider this regardless as they may need to take it to their IT department after the training for it to be installed when they go live.
• Is the new software cloud based.  Is it simple for it to be made available to them before, during or after their training.  If so consider a member of IT being available on the day and this being part of the course.

Using your own desktops/monitors Option:

• Do you have some spare desktops that you could utilise in a training room or rooms for a period that might last up to 12 weeks or even months if your training delivery is phased?
• Are you going have more than one training room running at any given time.  If so do you have enough spare laptops to accommodate this.

Buying or Leasing additional desktops and monitors:

Your company may buy or lease additional as and when required.  There is nothing wrong with considering if it is cost effective to lease or buy the additional desktops/monitor or laptops that would be required to kit out a training room.  You may choose to keep a training facility available at the end of the training period to train new starters, to test future planned changes to your software or even to be used afterwards for any staff expansion or to replace existing kit as it needs replacing.

Don’t forget you will need to also budget for the additional operating systems and possibly additional licences to run Microsoft office and the software you are rolling out.

If you are thinking of buying or leasing the training room software don’t forgot to include one for the trainer and a spare one if your budget can stretch to it in case you get any technical issues.

Hiring some training desktops/monitors or laptops:

Consider hiring some training desktops with monitors or laptops for the duration of the training project with operating system and Microsoft office.  You may need to make special arrangements for your software to be installed onto the pc’s as well so you may have additional costs for licencing during the training period.  Or the company hiring the computers may be able to supply the software licence as well dependent on what it is.

Hiring mobile classrooms or pods:

Consider talking to companies about hiring mobile classroom facilities.  They will often include  the computers and monitors as part of the cost.  This is a useful option to think about if your training needs to be at more than one site or if you don’t have a spare meeting room that can double up as a training room.