Great Falls College Starts International Welding Program

Great Falls College Montana State University has started a 37.5 hour class last week that would train supervisors from Canada and the United States on how to have their plants can be certified by the Canadian Welding Bureau. Supervisors are required to be certified by the CWB in order for their fabrication plants in the United States can send out their finish products to Canada.

Lou Petillot is the welding instructor of the program. He said that it is impossible for people memorize the code books that tackle personnel and structure. The course has been designed to teach students to go through the codes and find solutions to issues that come up in their projects that would meet standards made by the CWB.

There were seven students of the course and they leafed through the code books and doing their computations while taking the test. The college is already teaching students the skills they need to be certified in both US and Canadian standards.

Montana is located just south of Alberta and the companies within the region are fabricating and assembling large modules that will be used in oil sands development in Alberta. Canadian standards must be followed by the plants during the manufacturing stage and supervisors are required to be certified by the CWB.

The seven supervisors are part of the first batch in Montana. The program is one of the few in the United States. Kyle Gillespie of Great Falls College said that they have been working on the program for a long time now. He took the course along with two faculty members in the hopes of being able to teach the program themselves. He described it to be very intense. The instructor really knew what he was teaching and that is good for the program. One of the students came from Boise, Idaho; one came from Taber, Alberta, and two from Yates construction.