The Oceania round of the 2019 Hitachi Top Technician Competition took place on Thursday the 22rd of August with CablePrice’s Sam Reece coming out on top.  

The annual event has been running for 17 years and CablePrice has won twice and been runners up on several occasions.  

Hitachi-trained technicians from around the globe compete to be best Hitachi Technician in the world. The competition tests various levels of skills including finding faults as well as diagnosing machines, written theory tests and reporting in front of a judge’s panel about various findings regarding the machine in question.  

Up against 13 other competitors, Reece took out the Hitachi Top Technician for New Zealand earlier this year. Meanwhile, 34 competitors in Australia competed for three places in the finals. This led to the Oceania round at Hitachi Construction Australia’s Revesby Branch, in New South Wales. 

The day started with a 90-minute practical on the latest ZX-5B excavator. A number of faults were present in the excavator preventing the correct operation of the machine. There were also a number of additional hidden maintenance based faults giving the technicians an opportunity to upsell the benefits of using factory trained technicians.  

Reece’s excellent fault finding process won him the practical round with the highest marks of the competing technicians. Next up was theory followed by a report of findings to the judging panel, who had the opportunity to question Reece, who was announced the winner shortly after. He will represent New Zealand and Oceania in Japan at the Hitachi Top Tech world finals later this month.