Business of Welding: Change and the importance of taking action

Sometimes change can be difficult. This is a phrase that has been rattling around in my head for the past year as my team and I moved forward with what by all accounts is a major change—namely Acorn.

As you may have already read, Acorn is an education program developed to address the short-comings, from an industry perspective, of Canada’s current welding-related education programs. Acorn is big, it is a new way of thinking about training, and it is here now.

The truth is it is a huge change for all involved; industry, schools, educators and the CWB Group itself. It has taken a lot of planning, development and money to get here—all things the CWB Group is gladly willing to invest in to address issues that have been long standing and are long overdue for a fix.

Is change really needed? Yes, and here’s why:

The work welding and related professions like fitters and inspectors (let’s call them collectively “welding trades”) do needs to be considered a career, not just a job.

Educators need to start thinking from this perspective and work together across the country to ensure that students see and have access to the “big picture” opportunities that only a career can deliver.

This cannot happen at a local level, it needs a national framework and supporting courses, testing, assessments and infrastructure to help guide and measure a welder’s progress throughout his or her life-time, wherever he or she might be. Educational opportunities should happen everywhere, all the time…not just at once, at one location, for one fixed length of time.

Welding trades need to be trained, tested and assessed uniformly across the country. This needs to take into account the specific requirements of the industries that employ them.

Having good regional training only supports the immediate needs of local industry—however industries are increasingly forced to source their work force from across the country. They need a way to measure real skills and quality. They want a pool of pre-vetted candidates. The current system does not easily support this approach, nor does it provide the tools, systems, people, procedures and consistent funding needed to manage and deliver this at a national level.

There’s been too much talk, not enough action. There have been discussions about a national welding trade education “system” for as long as Canada has had welders. Dialog and discussion is good, but at some point someone needs to put the people and, equally important, funding in place that is needed to do the heavy lifting of turning talk into action. We are talking about big change stuff, and big change costs big dollars.

In Canada no one national organization has been willing to make this commitment on behalf of the industry at large. There has been funding at the local and provincial level, maybe even some joint inter-provincial initiatives, but nothing that is truly comprehensive and national, and nothing that has any guarantee of ongoing progress, or even lasting beyond the next election or economic downturn.

So, I’m happy to say that over the last year CWB Group, through the CWB Institute, has taken on the heavy lifting required to drive the big change that is needed, and we have moved quickly. We’ve funded and built out the content, the supporting backend systems, and the framework for a truly national system. We’ve put a model in place where this will remain current and up-to-date for the foreseeable future.

Acorn is ready now to support industry, are you ready to support Acorn? For more information about Acorn visit CWBGroup.org/Acorn, or reach out to me personally—the CWB Group is here to help.

Ian Campbell is Director of Marketing and New Product Development with CWB.