Great Scott takes off SA title

After a series of regional rounds of the Global Operator Challenge in recent months, it was South Australia's turn, with the state's finals run by Cavpower, the official Caterpillar® dealer for South Australia and Broken Hill.

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Leading South Australian-owned and operated civil earthworks company Buttrose Earthmovers has a longstanding reputation for delivering high-quality, reliable, and cost-effective services across a broad range of sectors.

And now it can add another feather to its cap: one of its employees has been crowned the best operator of machinery in the state.

Company site supervisor Scott Habermann took off the award at this year's South Australian GOC final, held at Cavpower's Wingfield premises.

He now heads to the regional finals in Japan, where another win will secure him a pass to the grand finals at next year's Conexpo trade fair in the USA.

Over two gruelling days of competition, Scott clearly demonstrated his prowess at operating an excavator, a skid steer and a wheeled loader through a series of challenging tasks, overcoming 24 of his peers. Given Scott's experience, the victory doesn't seem surprising.

“After finishing high school in 2015, I started working with a small earthmoving company in the Barossa,” he said.

"This is where I honed in my skills on smaller machines with jobs like carparks, house footings, pool excavations and other general earthmoving jobs.

“During this time I completed my Cert 3 in plant operations, and went to the BHP Olympic Dam minesite to operate mining equipment with Exact Contracting.

“After about a year, I got a job with Buttrose Earthmovers, where I have worked up the ranks to Leading Hand and now Supervisor.”

Scott said that his time with Buttrose has been fruitful, productive and a great learning experience.

“I have been able to broaden my range of machines operated. The diversity of the company means I can operate anything from a 5t to a 120t excavator, or jumping from a grader to a scraper,” he said.