In discussion with BCIT's Mathew Smith

In May 2022, Mathew Smith, PhD, was named director of the Centre for Welding Technologies and Metallurgy Research in the School of Construction and the Environment (SOCE) at British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT).  

First announced in November 2021, the BCIT Centre of Welding Technologies and Metallurgy Research Director is a collaboration between Seaspan Shipyards and BCIT to enhance BC-based industrial research capabilities in advanced welding and metallurgy. Over the span of five years, Seaspan has agreed to invest $1.65 million to fund the new research director and centre of expertise managed by industry professionals and associated research equipment and materials.

Canadian Fabricating & Welding recently caught up with Smith to discuss his plans and perspectives on the newly created position and centre.

  

Canadian Fabricating & Welding: What interested you in this position at BCIT?

  

Smith: The role is a very open-ended one. Seaspan wanted to make this investment, but neither Seaspan nor BCIT had significant constraints on how the director should do the job. Instead, they wanted someone to come in and develop something that could serve the needs of industry.

  

I'd been an entrepreneur. I liked the idea of working in a role that allowed me to operate in the sort of entrepreneurial spirit I’ve always enjoyed.

  

Through that previous work in welding engineering and non-destructive testing, I'm well established in the welding community in B.C., which will help when eliciting feedback on some of our future initiatives.

   

CFW: What has your experience in the position been like so far?

    

Smith: Part of it has been looking at where there are gaps in welding-related education in the province. For instance, BCIT has very mature programs for training welders. However, for people who work in and around welding, such as technologists, welding engineers, shop managers, there is a gap in offerings in those areas.

  

Seaspan has been challenged in finding welding supervisors and shop floor managers, and they are not alone. Managing a shop is one of those jobs that you don't necessarily train for; often someone works in a shop for a long time and learns those management skills on the job. But there are teachable skills that classes could offer to better equip those supervisors.

  

Ultimately, we would like to develop a welding engineering technologist program or something of that nature. I've been trying to address the lack of NDT and inspection education in B.C. as well. Those are courses that were historically offered here at BCIT but haven't been for a while. I’m working to re-establish those.

  

We are looking at getting an engineering technologist program off the ground, but that is a big undertaking. Meantime, we've been looking at part-time study courses and micro-credentials that can address welding management through online learning.

  

What I have seen a lot in the industry is that a structural steel fabricator, for instance, will want to branch out into other work. However, their ability to manage the standards of this other work aren’t there because they don’t have the welding engineering skill set on their team. They need that technical knowledge, like how to properly draw up and interpret contracts. So, on the education side, we want to fill these gaps in shops.

    

CFW: Micro-credentials seem to be a very popular approach to filling skills gaps. Do you think this approach will solve the short-term issues or be better for the industry in the long run?

   

Smith: I think that it's just the way that the world moves now; it changes around you and if you have a degree from 20 years ago, it might be that there are gaps in that education. Things evolve all the time. The requirement for continuing education is going to be with us forever.

  

Micro-credentials allow you to pick up skills as you need them.

 

CFW: Does the fact that you are getting calls from people saying “I need somebody yesterday for this particular job” show how important that flexibility is?

 

Smith: Yes, sometimes you just need to give a person the skills to do the job that people need at that moment. And we could offer that quickly and address labour shortages as they arise.

  

In the NDT world, people bemoan the fact we can't find inspectors, technologists, etc. So, trying to figure out how to address that problem in a cost-effective, agile way is important.

    

CFW: What about the research aspect?

    

Smith: On the research side, that's still nebulous right now, although discussions with Seaspan have been around creating efficiencies. We aren’t currently as interested in theoretical studies on things like microstructures; we’re keen to find ways in which technologies can truly make shops more efficient.

    

CFW: Could you provide a specific example? 

   

Smith: It’s really looking at how welding procedures are developed. Often on a given day someone shows up and we set a machine up and run a coupon and then do the testing. There’s often not a lot of discussion around whether this procedure is the best, most efficient way to do it.

  

Some of the conversations we've been having are asking, “What can we really do to try and optimize these welding procedures?” “By doing a little bit more work out front, can we push some of a shop’s welding parameters?” “Can we run welds a little bit faster?” “Are we even using the right welding process?” Those types of questions. 

 

And, of course, there are some interesting technologies being developed, and we are doing implementation studies and evaluations for them, running plates and seeing how well it really works, and doing the lab work to determine if these technologies are something that you really could implement in a shipyard. And connected with this, we would develop education programs specifically for welders and fitters who would be using any of these technologies.

 

If the shipyard was to bring some new technology in, how do we upgrade programs so that we are staying current? We have to think that through.

 

CFW: I can see how this could help the shipyards adapt more quickly to industry needs, but how do you see the centre helping the broader industry in the province? 

   

Smith: Ultimately, I'd like to get to a place where the centre is really serving the whole of B.C. We've had some sessions already, bringing in different people from industry to identify knowledge gaps in the welding trade. We are just trying to understand the state of affairs in B.C. right now so we can determine how best to address them.

 

But we are seeing that the need is clearly there for what we hope to bring to the industry.

   

CFW: Did you ever experience this yourself during your former work in the industry?

 

Smith: Yes. Both welding engineering and NDT are areas where there are knowledge gaps out there. A lot of these advanced NDT technologies aren't particularly new anymore, but the way that they're implemented is not well understood. Another challenge with new technology is that it is almost too good. Newer technologies more easily identify issues that many technologists, without proper training, may not know how to handle. The challenge for people unused to the technology is, “Is the issue I’ve found something that is a concern?” Without the right training, it’s hard to answer that question. Going from a radiograph to phased array or some form of ultrasonics is going to change your perception of a weld.

    

CFW: I noticed that you installed a new Lincoln Electric machine and you have the company’s HyperFill technology. Is that one example of the sorts of things you're looking at to see how they can be adapted and implemented?

   

Smith: Yes. We were looking at the HyperFill technology and we also had the company’s cobot in the shop. With the HyperFill we are looking at some simple things, like if we change to a cored wire, how that might affect application speeds.

 

With any technology, the manufacturer’s data sheet may provide important information, but is that information relevant to shop floor daily usage? We want to look at how to optimize from an applicable standpoint.

 

CFW: Why is it important to train people so that they can achieve the best, most reasonable outcome from a technology?

 

Smith: It’s important to consider the environment and context of where the technology will be applied. HyperFill may seem too fast for manual welding, especially with less experienced workers. Does this mean robotics are needed to optimize this technology? Those are the questions we hope to explore.

 

CFW: So, will you be looking at robot and cobot technology as part of building efficiencies?

    

Smith: I think that combination between ease of use and the fact that people are just having a hard time finding welders means that shops have to think about robots and cobots and programming. 

 

Cobots could have a very big impact in B.C. Our market tends to have companies doing a great deal of custom work rather than production welding. With cobots, if you’ve got a skilled welder, the interfaces of these cobots allow them to program welds promptly. Today’s cobots have higher payloads and can be integrated with larger welding systems. What implication does this have on industry players like Seaspan? What are the efficiency gains with this type of technology? Where do they fit in any given environment? We want to evaluate these sorts of questions.

 

As for what we will be looking at in our program, pretty much everything is on the table right now. For instance, Seaspan already uses robotics effectively on its panel lines, but there is room to improve.

BCIT already has a robotics department in the school of construction, but there may be technologies that we could bring in that could be multi-purpose, being used by our group and the robotics department so we’re not just buying something that’s a welding robot, even if it’s being used in the welding lab. 

 

CFW: Is there anything else you want to mention before we wrap up?

   

Smith: The main thing I'd like to make sure people understand is that we are very open right now to feedback on what industry needs. We are keen to address the needs of the industry, creating a centre that can benefit the manufacturing sector and the province as a whole.

 

That's the way BCIT works. There has to be interaction with industry to really ensure that the work we do addresses its needs.

BCIT, www.bcit.ca