Halvorsen Mutual · Corbin Savings Bank
Be on call for a real mainframe shop.
Ironworks Lab gives you your own running copy of a real-sized insurer and a bank. You operate the nightly batch, fix what breaks, and keep a record of every incident you resolve, so you can show an employer that you would survive your first night shift.
Access is by invitation.
A screen recorded from a Halvorsen lab: the premium by coverage on a personal auto quote.
Your lab
A system of your own, not a toy program
A green screen in the browser
A 24 by 80 terminal with function keys, protected and unprotected fields and a status line. Programs run as COBOL on a CICS-style monitor, and batch runs as JCL.
Missions, graded on the business result
Operate the nightly jobs, fix a failed run, extend a rule. Check looks at the outcome, such as policies renewed or a ledger that balances, not at the keys you pressed.
Yours to break
Each learner has a private lab reset from a snapshot, with no network and with limits on time and memory. Nothing you do reaches anyone else.
Two systems
Halvorsen Mutual and Corbin Savings Bank
Halvorsen Mutual
A fictional property and casualty insurer in three states. Personal auto and homeowners, commercial property and workers' compensation, with quotes, binding, policy changes, claims, and the nightly and monthly batch that renews, bills, earns and reconciles.
Corbin Savings Bank
A fictional savings bank. Checking, savings, money market and certificate accounts, a double-entry ledger, daily interest accrual, statements, a trial balance and teller screens, with batch jobs that must balance to the cent.
Every person, address, vehicle and account is generated. Nothing in either system comes from a real person, and neither system handles payments.
Night Shift
The system breaks. The pager goes off.
Choose an on-call window. At a time you cannot predict inside it, something breaks in your own lab: a job that abends on bad packed data, a ledger extract that repeats earlier nights, an account row held by a stuck session. The lamp turns from Quiet to Paged, a clock starts, and you diagnose, fix, restart and check.
A resolved incident becomes a record with its timeline, which you can share with a link. The page reaches your phone too; the work itself needs a computer.
The lamp always says a word
Status is a word and a shape as well as a colour.
The Kit
The same system, as proof for modernization teams
Every business rule of Halvorsen Mutual is catalogued with its COBOL paragraph and an independent oracle that rates the same policies a second way. The Kit shows where they agree, keeps golden masters for every job, and offers a test pack that a migration team runs against a converted system on its own side.