The CWB Association Welding Podcast
The CWB Association Welding Podcast
Episode 186 with Andrea Armstrong and Max Ceron
The CWB Association brings you a weekly podcast that connects to welding professionals around the world to share their passion and give you the right tips to stay on top of what’s happening in the welding industry.
Buckle up as we explore the inspiring world of shipbuilding on the west coast of Canada with Andrea Armstrong, a Red Seal Welder from Seaspan. Learn the meticulous process of transforming raw steel plates into magnificent vessels, and feel the excitement as Andrea recounts witnessing a Coast Guard vessel launch under the iconic 300-ton crane, Big Blue. Despite her family's academic inclinations, she pursued her passion for trades, leading to a rewarding career in welding and the joy she feels bringing her family to see these engineering marvels in action.
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All right, I can check. Check, I'm good. So I'm Max Duran. Max Duran, cwb Association Welding Podcast, pod pod podcast. Today we have a really cool guest welding podcast. The show is about to begin.
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Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to another edition of the CWB Association podcast. My name is Max Duran and, as always, I'm out there looking for the stories that you love to hear and the ones that are hard to find. Today we're going back to the well, to a company that's given us some great stories and I think we got another great one. Today we have Andrea Armstrong, coming to us from the west coast of Canada, out in BC, who she works at C-SPAN. Andrea, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:Doing great. How are you doing, Max?
Speaker 1:I'm good. It was a very busy day for me today. I was running around with my head cut off, but this is a good way to end it. How about you?
Speaker 2:You know what? About the same. We just had a Coast Guard vessel launch that I was able to go see on Monday, and then we just had a Coast Guard vessel launch that I was able to go see on Monday, and then I'm in a QA role right now. So just lots of paperwork and OQE.
Speaker 1:Yay, yay, yay. So tell me, boat launch, a Coast Guard boat launch. What is that like?
Speaker 2:What entailed that. Today I'm honestly not the best person to speak on it, because, as a welder, my entire part of coming into the boat launches was just to be like, oh, it's so pretty, it's going into the ocean, but we have a really great and they lift, lift the full vessel, uh, they put it out at the vsy, um, and then it will go over to vdc at the dry dock, uh, but it's, yeah, the scale of launch is always what gets to me. So this will be the second boat that I've seen launch and then, yeah, it's just for me, it's always the scale of it Is it like a big splash.
Speaker 2:There is not. They are very good at their job so it's very controlled and it's very nice and into the water, but it's the size of something and uh, especially for me, because I've been with the company um off and on, because I'm doing my education, for about six years, uh, and so I saw this when it was like just plates of steel coming through and getting cut and to to have something that goes from like a bunch of plates that you're like tacking together uh to this completed ocean, uh, oceanography vessel is insane that's wild it was.
Speaker 2:It was really cool. We got to bring in families too. They had an open house.
Speaker 1:Really, was it like a barbecue and stuff, like let's watch this boat hit the water?
Speaker 2:they. To be fair, they didn't launch the boat with with everyone in there, but they did.
Speaker 1:They did put it up at the at the end of the dock yeah yeah, and we were able to bring families uh into the yard to see, so, which is really cool, a lot of the people in the yard have kids, so it was really cool to see all of the kids running around and just getting so stoked so I've googled boat launches and there's some sketchy ones like massive boats being like rolled down like inflatable tubes, and it's just like giver man, like. It's just like. Once this thing starts rolling down the hill, they just smash into the ocean and float away and then somebody like catches it somehow, like with a tugboat, and you made it sound like it's not like that at all it is.
Speaker 2:It is not, and I think that's because we do have a really good uh, really good crew when it comes to movement and for our crane operators, and then we have a really good marine crew. Um, I think if you let the welders be the one to do it, it would probably look more like that. I think anyone from our side of the association would be like we could roll it down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it'll float. It's fine, it'll do fine.
Speaker 2:Like I welded that. It should be good, but thankfully we are not allowed to do it. So we have a really good crew out there. Um, and I'm always just amazed, especially too, because we have a very large crane called big blue. Uh, that's a 300 ton.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a 300 ton crane uh, you can see big blue from across the water yes, you can see big blue from most of vancouver yeah there's.
Speaker 2:It is a landmark and a half uh, which is always really cool when you get to be working underneath it or come onto site, um. It also makes it very easy to point out where you work to people oh, yeah, I guess I never really thought over there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, let's back up here because, like you, got a pretty impressive resume for a young woman, you know, and uh, and I was looking at it this morning and thinking I'm looking forward to this interview because I mean, a lot of the things you do are things that are right in my wheelhouse. I know it's never in shipbuilding, although we did talk right before the show. I'd had a little bit of dipping my fingers into it because of some marine annex stuff I did with a college. But you're a red seal welder, a level one inspector, a wet, which is a welding engineering technologist, and now you're in your third year to be mechanical engineer. Yes, now that's a lot in a short period of time, because you don't look like you're 40 to me. I don't. I mean maybe I can just maybe I'm gauging way off, but that's a lot of, a lot of stuff going on. So, in order of chronicle here, what was first was the was the red seal.
Speaker 1:Welding was first. All right, so how old were you when you started welding?
Speaker 2:okay, so there's two answers to that. There's the when I became an apprentice, um, which was at 19. And then there is when I first ever struck an arc, but no one told me it was welding, and I don't have trades in my family, so I had no idea what that. What I had actually done was welding, and that was at 16.
Speaker 3:And that was on school.
Speaker 2:No, that was actually on board a ship crossing the Atlantic and we got stuck in the doldrums, which is right on the equator, and I had a very cool chief engineer who was like hey kid, want to learn how to do this. You get to glue metal together with fire. And so at 16, I struck my first arc on a ship and then went off lived life. Came back, didn't know what welding was, had no idea uh went through bcit for a women in trades program.
Speaker 2:But you just kind of got to try a couple stuff. Yeah, loved it. Love, fell in love with welding, got in, did my c-ticket um, and then two years after that, at 21, I ended up being a ship welder. So it was a very it was a very cool full circle moment there's a couple things to unpack.
Speaker 1:There's a couple things to unpack in there. First of all, what are you doing on a ship at the equator at 16. Uh, that's not a thing people do at 16. They're like. They're not like, hey, yo I'm going on a ship at the equator, like that's pretty far from BC you know what?
Speaker 2:it was a distance from BC. So I was really lucky and when I was 16, uh, there was basically like a student deckham program, um, on board ships, uh. And then, you know, you did school at the same time and so the ship that I was on on board was a fully rigged, tall ship. So for what, if most people don't know what that is, think pirate ship? Yeah, three mast, 15 square sails, 27 sails in total, and we crossed. We started in the Great Lakes of canada, went out through the st lawrence, crossed the atlantic the first time over to the azores in portugal, went down the coast of africa and kind of got to senegal, um gory island, and then went back across the current back yeah rode the current back, which is where I struck an arc for the first time on our way to barbados, uh did the caribbean and, and out of bermuda we went back to cross over to france and bring the ship home to norway.
Speaker 2:So that was a year of from 16 to 17, that I have this whirlwind how do you find this Like?
Speaker 1:this sounds like an incredible journey, like yo. Sign me up, man.
Speaker 2:My oldest, so the program used to be able to. So it was like you could be grade 11, grade 12 and first year university, and the university students went out of a very small Nova Scotia Well, not very small, but small Nova Scotian university called Acadia, which is where my oldest sister did her first degree. Uh, and so she came home and was like, hey, I think Andrew would do well at this. We should see if we can get her on this boat that's wild and I did that sounds like such, like such an experience.
Speaker 1:So were you a shippy person before living and growing up in BC? I mean, there's two types of people that live on the coast, right, there's people that live on the coast and live in the coast, so they're like in the water, they're in boats or in canoes or in kayaks or on boats or on ferries, whatever. Then there's people that live at the coast that don't know how to swim and have never stuck a foot in the ocean. Right, and there's both like I'm from south america and chile. We are all coastal, and half my family's probably never been in the ocean because they're like brutally scared of it, something I know, it's just a coastal thing. So were you a kid growing up being like I love boats?
Speaker 2:or were you like boats are weird, I don't know like no, I, I loved boats, and that's fully to both of my parents. My mom was a commercial diver before she became a nurse, um, and was a kayak uh, it's like licensed kayak instructor yeah uh, and so we grew up fully in the water right um, all the time, and my, my dad, started in marine biology before switching over to medicine as well, and so both of my parents.
Speaker 2:We grew up with very watery, water-based people, but also extremely nerdy water-based people. My mom did drift dives to study octopus and my dad studied the. The marine biologist will be upset with me, uh, but the most boring fish known to man, which was the black-eyed goby and kelp.
Speaker 1:So that was anything's fun if you study it all right so, but that was the like.
Speaker 2:Home environment was like always, always in a kayak always on the water. We all knew how to swim, we all loved being out on the water, um, so it fit really well to go on the boat, and then it fits very well now, as an adult, to come back and build them yeah.
Speaker 1:So you go around this trip around the world, you strike an arc and then you get back to high school and it sounds like your family's fairly academic. You didn't have the push for you coming out of high school to get into university and become a marine biologist, kayaker, commercial diver, nurse, medicine man.
Speaker 2:There was a push for education that was my family's big thing was education was a push for education. That was my family's big thing. Was education was key? Uh, and it is. Most people ask me because they usually expect, um, especially my dad because he's a doc that they would have been upset when I went trades um and I actually got into university, did half a year of medical physics, uh well, but then was like not for me um, not now.
Speaker 2:My dude don't want to do this uh and I was really nervous to tell my family when I was like, hey, I think I'm gonna go drop out and become a welder, um, and I was really scared to talk to my dad about it, and the first thing he did he was like go on, let's hop in the car and he took me out for dinner. The same he did for both my other sisters when they got into an educational program, um, and so for my parents and my family they were like we've just cared that you get an education.
Speaker 2:Trades is a great education and like I don't think I I don't think I had a prouder person than my dad when I got my red seal. Um to the point, he was a problem that he would like go to random strangers and be like my daughter's a red seal and they're like a what and they're like are you like what? And he's like she's a welder, she's a red seal and then they would ask him they're like what is a red seal?
Speaker 1:and he would spiel it all out to them. This is what it is, this is what it does, this is what she does. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:So they were I. I got really lucky with that of like very academic family, but they view trades as education and that was their only push.
Speaker 1:For me was I needed to be educated and it didn't matter what that education was in well, technically, everything is science, right, like, at the end of the day, everything is a science science. So, like you can dip your toes in the welding and you might just consider yourself a stick welder and you're just stick welding or MIG welding every day. But what you're doing is science and if you really want to get into it, there is an endless career path that you can go down, which I see you are on. But we you know, and I've gone down that path. I started off as a welder at 17. And like I mean, now I'm an executive director at the Canadian Welding Bureau. Working codes and standards, and you just it opens up. It's endless, right. So let's go back to post high school, try university Bit of. I went to university for philosophy, ended up becoming a welder.
Speaker 2:You went to medicine ended up becoming a welder. You went to.
Speaker 1:Medicine ended up becoming a welder physics. Physics, not medicine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay and we, we all stayed away from medicine. We knew that from the get-go 100.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So then you, you start going down this path for welding. Now as a young female, you know you're. You're probably 18 ish, maybe coming up on 19, starting your journey in bc. You have a level cba format before you can go for your red seal. Um, for people across the country it's the same three blocks, just a different name, um, but did you have any major obstacles like your family's? Not one no but what about other obstacles?
Speaker 1:did you have any other issues with finding apprenticeships or or with the course itself, like, did you struggle with the welding program at all, or was it were you pretty good at it?
Speaker 2:um, I was lucky that I, like naturally, had pretty decent hands um for someone I had also prior to becoming a welder, and I think this is where, like having good hands came from.
Speaker 2:Um I was a jeweler okay so I was a jeweler from the time I was about 17 18. I worked with a silversmith in bc, um, and so I knew some things, like I knew what oxy feel was. We used it to do some of our silver soldering I was working with really, really fine and fire, and so there were parts of that. That. A lot of the welding. I didn't necessarily struggle in, obviously I wasn't like I was amazing out the bat.
Speaker 3:That's just not how it was.
Speaker 2:But I didn't have this huge gap that I thought I was going to, because so many of the men that I went through the program with um came from a trades background and I mean they'd been welding in their garage since they were like 12 14 um and I had. So I was really nervous when I first set up for the program. Um, and the jewelry came in really handy. Um, there's obviously like being a woman in a trade you're going to run into issues, that's you know, all of us do.
Speaker 2:It is a reality of the situation. At the same time, what I found is that you're going to run into a lot of champions. So I had a lot of like men in my life and a lot of people assume it is the women and when you meet them it is for the most part. But I had the amount of men in my life and in my career who were the ones that had my back, who are the ones that got me jobs, got me apprenticeships, the whole bit like and from the get-go from my first instructor right.
Speaker 2:So from my first instructor I was getting really upset with him. He was passing I thought you know someone else's weld and I was really angry because I'm like my world looks better yeah why am I not getting passed? And he finally just put me aside. He's like look, you're gonna. You gotta be a good welder if you want to do this, because you need to be. You need to be confident if you're going to be a woman in the field.
Speaker 2:I know blow their socks off, yeah, and I know you can do it, so go give me a better bloody weld than what you're going to be a woman in the field, you're going to have to blow their socks off, yeah, and I know you can do it. So go give me a better bloody well than what you're bringing to me. I don't care that. It's not the worst one of the day. Make it good you shouldn't be aiming for.
Speaker 2:like you know better than the worst right, and so that was like my initial step into the trade. I immediately had people who were in there who were just amazing and made sure that I had this pathway through it. Um, and there's always you know, pardon my language there's always going to be an a**hole you know what I mean regardless of if you're a man or a woman or whatever, you're going to run into some people that you know it's usually based in envy.
Speaker 1:It's usually based in envy, it's usually based on jealousy, it's usually based on their own shortcomings.
Speaker 1:That makes them lash out, I mean we live in a patriarchy we live in a male dominated system of society and the trades are kind of like almost like the worst example of that patriarchy. At the end of the day, you need men to stand up against the patriarchy because they're the ones that own it right. That's kind of they're gonna make the biggest differences and I like I mean I support and absolutely 100 love the growth of women and any gender diversity within the trades, but the men gotta back down and be like yo, like chill.
Speaker 2:Let this happen, right, and I I found that like I had that without ever having to ask for it. I just had. I was very lucky. Um, I also think that it is a majority.
Speaker 2:I think most people that I work with are just lovely, amazing people well, for the most part, they might be a bit grouchy they might be a bit grouchy, a hundred percent, you know, they might tell you to f off, but it's from a place of love, or at least like not a place of hate. Um, and so I like I found that for the majority of the time I had, I always had at least one person that really had my back or was really pushing me, um, to kind of develop into a better welder than what I was, or then when I kept progressing into an engineer and into an inspector, so I got really lucky with a lot of the people that I work with that I consider mentors, and most of them are men, because it is a male-dominated field Like most people.
Speaker 2:I work with are men. Most of my them are men because it is a male dominated field. Like most people I work with are men. Most of my mentors are men and they've yeah, they've just had my back from the from the moment I started.
Speaker 1:So walk us through your journey through the three levels then, because apprenticeship can be kind of a bag sometimes in terms of getting your hours and getting the types of hours you need for for getting onto the next level. So were you able to do all three years of your apprenticeship in bc, or did you have to chase down some work other places to to finish all your hours?
Speaker 2:so I I was. I stayed bc. I was a bc girl for my trade. I didn't do an a ticket because in bc you don't need to, because it's uh, it's TIG pipe and special alloys. And I, at the, the last week of my B ticket, I got a shut down job, um, and then I kept working throughout that and I was like I'm not going back for my A ticket. I have consistent work. I'm gonna go over here, um, and I do. It is one of those things that, especially now that I've switched more to a science site, I do really wish I had come back for my A ticket.
Speaker 1:Just to have it in the bag and it's done.
Speaker 2:It's interesting, it's cool alloys, it's all of those things and just, I think, a little bit of bragging rights, just to be like oh yeah, a ticket. Same thing with your pressure tickets to sleep out.
Speaker 2:But so I did with your you know your pressure tickets to um. But so I I did my c ticket and then I went out and I took whatever job I could and when I started I started with a stack of resumes in my uh little mazda, uh and all of my tools and everything to get ready to do weld tests, uh, and I had worked for a couple small shops and then started doing predominantly shutdowns in, predominantly like sawmills, um pulp mills so you're working interior bc here now or no?
Speaker 2:no, I was mostly on the coast, I did do some interior, not a huge amount, um, but we we had a fair amount of work over here, um, and so I worked. It's it's closed down now, but I worked at favela for a lot of my hours, which is out in a, out in port, moody there, uh, and learned a lot from the guys there. Not always I think the uh the safest way to maybe do something, but no there's lots of tricks.
Speaker 1:We got it done um like I always tell people on the show if you want to learn how to weld, get a maintenance job. You learn how to do everything the wrong way, but hey, it works I learned how to form steel with a forklift.
Speaker 2:We rolled. We rolled steel with a forklift yeah, which is not how you're supposed to steal.
Speaker 1:And when I went, and oh and s does not comply all right.
Speaker 2:No, it's not in. Flivello is no longer running, so you know what? Fair enough but, when I, when I switched over to c-span and I saw there for me and shop, I was like, oh well, like you guys are so precise they're like yeah yeah, how did you roll anything? I was? Like smash man, tack and smash oh yeah, hot tax, yeah, hot tax, our girl's best friend damned right I had a miller.
Speaker 2:I get that for me on a t-shirt and I've lost a t-shirt now, but I had a miller. I get me a t-shirt that says hot tax, our girl's best friend true story everyone, we all, never get it to move that far.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, we will we'll get it to move. Don't you worry about that. Hot tacks and a dog and wedge you can build anything yeah yeah, and in a chicken foot.
Speaker 1:For good measure you're, you're good to go so you, you, you got your red seal and now you're looking at opportunities right, and obviously you love your province. You seem very, you know, into which I love, because I love Saskatchewan. People make fun of me for it, but screw them. I love where I live. I have had a great career out here and made a pile of money. Everything's great. So you know you do what you do where you are Now. Have you stayed in bc your whole career? Um, or after your red seal, did you do some experimenting around or you know what was next on the list for you?
Speaker 2:so I got, I stayed with c-span until because I loved it.
Speaker 2:I loved shit building um, and then I kind of got it into my head of like, you know, I maybe, I maybe think I want to go back and get more of an education, and so I was like, cool, yeah, let's see what we got. And there's a welding engineering team at C-SPAN and prior to C-SPAN. I didn't know that that existed, I did not know that that was an engineering discipline, and when I looked it up at the time, the only licensed by the CWB program was SAIT at Alberta and was at a technologist level, and so I went okay, well, that's like I'm going to Alberta, that's where I got to go.
Speaker 2:So I was out in Alberta.
Speaker 1:It's a two-year program.
Speaker 2:It's a two-year program. It's a two-year program. It's an awesome program. I wish more people would take it, because it is an awesome program.
Speaker 1:It is getting more popular. Now it's all over Alberta. We have one in Saskatchewan, Conestoga, Ontario. It's spreading. It's a great program.
Speaker 2:And so SAIT was great. It's called the WET program, which is not the best acronym for it.
Speaker 3:No, but hey it is what it is.
Speaker 1:We took it. It sort of tracks.
Speaker 2:It did well and so I moved out to Alberta. I started doing the more science side of things and, coming from a pretty academic family, pretty science-based family, um, it clicked and it was just fantastic. And I think the big thing for me was because I was a red seal and also an adult, like I was coming back you know, I think I started at 25 yeah, and so it was just I was, I was, you know, had kind of more of my my together here and knew what I wanted to come back for um.
Speaker 2:But I started getting into metallurgy and having these metallurgy classes and then, as a welder, there was a lot of stuff that I had learned um over trial and error, through my career or just from, uh, you know, it was the way we had to do it for codes and standards, or from mentors who were like beautiful, amazing welders that you're like I, you know, could weld for 40 years and not produce something that looks as nice, right or is as strong.
Speaker 2:Uh, and so I, I did things throughout my career that I did them because they worked right. And then I went to school and we started talking about microstructures and you're like uh-huh and my entire metallurgy course.
Speaker 2:I felt a little bad for every other instructor because I think I ignored every other class and was like this is now my favorite thing in the world, um, and so I got to learn how to do destructive testing. I've got to learn how to do microstructure analysis, learn about you know past a basic crystal structure, which we do learn a little bit about yeah, the bcc, fcc, the basic, yeah, yeah, you do learn a little bit about.
Speaker 2:But the bcc, fcc, the basic stuff, yeah, you do learn a little bit about. But then getting into things like you know, tetrahedrals, carbon phase diagrams, and getting into, like ferrite formations like widman's dot, and ferrite versus a secular ferrite, versus like, okay, what's your hardenability, which is used to to form martensite? Um, and how that interacts with steel properties, um, and then all the the different things you know, like you're in your, your magnetism, your thermal resistivity, your everything, everything, yeah, oh, I'm a I'm a metallurgy nerd it's basically how I got to where I am is.
Speaker 1:I rode the metallurgy bus right and I always said it's a good bus.
Speaker 3:It's a great bus and I always told my students that it's the ultimate problem solver.
Speaker 1:I said, like you know, in your life you can live your entire career as a welder or fabricator without learning metallurgy and you'll be great, you'll be fine. But when you have a problem arise, something breaks, something cracks, something happens. It's a lot of trial and error to figure it out, but if you got a good metallurgy background, you're going to look at that and immediately narrow it down to a set of principles that you're like okay, I'm pretty sure that it's going to be one of two things here, and I know how to check. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like and uh and it just it makes problem solving so much easier my, my favorite and I don't know if you've had this of like getting to do some very, very basic level failure analysis and actually having it be like a puzzle and a picture of like, hey, we have this crack, and when you, when you actually put that underneath a microscope, when you, when you acid edge it, when you do all these things, um and I, well, I guess, if there's a crack and you're doing failure analysis, don't acid edge anything yet, um, should I? I've probably got the metallurgy instructor yelling at me in the back, but my coolest thing was learning that, like the steel will tell you where it broke because of things that are called like chevrons and like river run lines, and you can see, you can actually like with fatigue cracks it looks like waves.
Speaker 2:It looks like waves on a beach under a microscope and you can see it. And then you can see where it reaches that critical thickness point, where all of a sudden, it turns into a cleavage in this, this fast fracture, um. And when I found that I was like, are you telling me there's been puzzles in my steel this entire time?
Speaker 2:yes, there has for like eight years you're telling me that I didn't have to like that. I could have been taking this apart and and it would show me where it broke or why it broke the way it did. Um, and so, yeah, that was for me the biggest as soon as I got into the wet program and did that first metallurgy course I was.
Speaker 1:I was set I wasn't going back for me, the biggest thing that made my brain kind of flip completely over to that side was that I used to be a stainless welder that was like my. That was my meal ticket.
Speaker 1:I welded stainless tig mig stick oh, you were prettier welder than me, so I did that for years and I made a lot of money doing stainless work in saskatchewan for mine mining, company manufacturing and um. And there's so much you have to do to be careful around stainless that I had just learned from procedures, from working with people and then when I got into metallurgy like I feel like stainless is some maybe the easiest material to really see what happens with grain migrations and temperatures oh yeah and grain boundaries and all the things that can happen, and you know the carbon pooling and the hydrogens pockets and in stainless, you really see it Like you ever bend a stainless plate and it cracks.
Speaker 1:You can just look at the crystals. You just put them in the light. You don't need acid, you don't need nothing, you just put it in the light and be like uh-huh, uh-huh, I know what's going on. You know like, and I realized that, like you said said, the experience that's out in the field, on the floor gets you to the same place. But this is coming at it from another angle, right, and and that's why I love engineers that know how to weld and welders that know how to engineer, because they kind of got the big picture right I thought that it's just.
Speaker 2:it's cool to see something that you've done for so many years, that you've done because it's the way you're supposed to do it, and then be able to answer why. And that was when I was an apprentice, I think I annoyed a lot of people because I'd be like but what? But like, why do I have to breathe Like it's?
Speaker 1:a tap.
Speaker 2:Why do I have to breathe Like what's?
Speaker 1:this. It's going to get on anyways.
Speaker 2:And so it was really cool, especially for me going back to be like, oh, that's that's why, like now, what about your family?
Speaker 1:like now that you're back in the science fold, was your mom and dad being like, ah, we knew you couldn't escape. No, they're. Like I said they're so.
Speaker 2:They're so just proud of education, but they really do consider everything a form of education? Yeah, very equal right like it. It needs to be formal education, but trades engineering like there's. They're really proud of me that I'm going back now as an adult. Um, I think they're. They definitely feel a bit better that I'm no longer on tools yeah, just for safety, health, yeah for longevity for longevity for sure um I definitely know that.
Speaker 2:I think it makes both my parents quite happy that I'm no longer like fully on tools or doing anything super dangerous anymore and that I'm more in a lab base that they. I think they just breathe a bit easier, especially because they don't have that background. And it is dangerous work, it is all of those things it can be, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:But I think too for them, especially not coming from a trades background where you're used to things like heavy duty machinery, where you're you know, where you're used to things like 300 tonne cranes and like it can just be a bit, and they've seen some of the sites I've worked at and so I think it can just be a bit like it makes them feel a bit better than I'm out of that now, right, and then, I'm onto a science side that it it has.
Speaker 2:Uh, I have a lot of longevity in the career that I'm not as necessarily likely to get injured, right so you do your time in calgary, you get your two-year wet program underneath your belt.
Speaker 1:Any plans of sticking around in the in the madness of alberta? Or were you bounce, bounce, dip out back to bc?
Speaker 2:no back. I think if I stayed in alberta, I would have, uh, been very bad and started pouring salt in the bow river. Um, I think I would have accidentally killed all of their wildlife, because I was really missing the ocean. I grew up on the water. I love being back home on my coast. On any coast I'm quite happy, but especially back where I grew up. And no, I do think I would have accidentally poisoned wildlife if I stayed much longer just because I would have put, I would have put a lot of salt in the bow river, just to feel like I was home so you head back to bc.
Speaker 1:What are your thoughts? Employment wise, are you like okay, I got a new designation now, um, you start stacking them right. So now the resume is starting to look pretty stacked right. Did you have your level one inspector yet?
Speaker 3:Yep, yeah, I got it at the end of the tech.
Speaker 1:Usually it's part of the last year of the program yet. So you got your tech, or sorry, you got your tech program. Then you got your level one. Did you go right back to C-SPAN and say, hey, new me, you guys got a job for me, or did you? Did you venture out and look for other stuff?
Speaker 2:um, so kind of twofold. So I worked for c-span while I was doing my education. I came back in the summer and I uh their wild edge team uh, was nice enough to take me on as an intern um and I got to set up the help set up the lab and help do some lab work for them for the destructive testing lab, which was amazing uh it was much nicer equipment than I ever used at school um and they have some really really cool, cool wild angels over there who were just kind enough to walk me through a lot of more high level stuff, um, and so I I obviously was like okay, like I want to ship build on the West Coast, that C-span.
Speaker 2:But I also looked at it and I looked at kind of point in life because I'm 27. And I thought if I want to go get the full degree it's a lot easier to do it now. I'm not too tied down right now. You know, I'm young enough that if I wait, another kind of five, six years family, all that type of stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker 2:No, you don't, and so I was like you know what, let's you know.
Speaker 1:I'll start kind of getting prepped for jobs.
Speaker 2:But let's see if I can get into this bridge program to UVic. And I am the first welding engineer that they've ever taken, which is a little terrifying.
Speaker 1:So I was going to ask you, because UVic is not known as a welding engineering college. It's basically U of A, the CCWJ, or Waterloo, which is the CAJW. So you know, between those two colleges in Canada those are the only two really known for welding engineering program.
Speaker 2:But they and to my knowledge, and maybe, and this is maybe where I lack some, some education on it to my knowledge they you don't come out fully designated as a weld edge.
Speaker 1:No, you come out as a materials engineer, or a version of it, and the accreditation certificate.
Speaker 2:Right, that's right. Sorry, let me just speak over you there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So now you're the first under the full weld eng at UVic.
Speaker 2:So I'm a mechanical engineer at UVic but I'm the first weld eng tech that they've ever accepted into this bridge program into mechanical engineering. So I went to and was like, hey, here are my marks, here's my experience, here's how similar our math and our basic courses were. Would you guys mind, Can we work something out? Because they don't actually take from our program, and so I'm the kind of tester child. I take one extra course, and so so far so good. So far so good. Well, I'm sure it'll be fine, the education's going to be there.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm already a semester through. So, I'm a semester done. I got one more transfer semester and then in January I should be going over to UVic. So it's a Camosun bridge program through Camosun to UVic, okay. I used to have a friend that taught at Camosun.
Speaker 1:I don't know if he's there anymore, Albrey, but he was a good teacher.
Speaker 2:He's got great programs. Oh, kamosan's fantastic. So I you know it. So that's kind of where I'm at for right now or else am I sorry, else am I.
Speaker 1:That was sorry, in case he's listening.
Speaker 2:I didn't get it wrong so that's yeah, that's kind of where I am and the. The choice for me was when I looked at what was required from the CWB. I have a Red Seal ticket, I have a welding engineering technologist, I have an inspector's license. I have so many years in the field you guys do look at mechanical and materials and so I thought, okay, mechanical, you know the, the weld edge tech is really specialized and it gives me a designation, right. So that's why I went tech and then the mechanical. I could either go to Waterloo, I could go to U of A. I wouldn't come out as a designated weld edge um, I'd come out as a materials edge with a certificate, but I wouldn't come out as a designated weld eng. And it's another four years.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Versus, I can come out as a mechanical engineer in two or two and a bit.
Speaker 1:Two and a bit.
Speaker 2:I thought, okay, let's do the two and a bit.
Speaker 3:Then I'll apply on a case by case.
Speaker 2:And if that doesn't work, I can always go do a master's, and if I do a master's, and if I do a master's I can go to england, I can go um to places where that educational, educational pathway is really, really established for welding engineering yeah, one of the best in north america is in denver, hearing if you wanted to stay I I stay away from the states and I get it there's which which is, but it's just.
Speaker 2:It's always one of those things. The States have never been a place that I've wanted to go live. I love to go visit my one of my other sisters lives down in LA. There are there's a lot of people.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a lot of people in the UK too.
Speaker 2:But so for me? I kind of looked at it. I thought, okay, this gets me the eng degree.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your PNG.
Speaker 2:My background and my other tickets give me the weld eng Realistically too. Even if I don't want to go add more education, I can work in welding engineering. I can apply for these jobs because I have so much experience, because I have these other designations.
Speaker 1:And you're still really young.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then now I also you know the knock on wood, haven't finished it yet should hopefully uh also have a pinch yeah, right, so come out and then and get my professional designation after. And so for me it was like, okay, there's no set pathway that's super well established in Canada to get the welding engineering. This is the way I think it's going to work best for me, because I also wanted to start really specialized, because I'm I am a welder yeah, and I was like I know what I want to come back for.
Speaker 2:I want to start. Specialized state to me looked the most specialized uh, off of the bat that it was. The whole program was focused on welding engineering, right yeah it was really, really, that's what its goal was, um. So I was like okay, that's what I'm going to start with, we'll try the transfer, we'll get the engineering degree, whatever it is, and we'll go from there, right that's not.
Speaker 1:It's not that uncommon like I know quite a few welders that got their red seals that ended up engineers and they're. They're like my favorite engineers I've worked with because we speak the same lingo. You know what I mean. It's like we can. We can talk up like I can talk the talk of the high game but I can also talk down and talk the talk of, like the floor game you know like and that's really valuable right yeah, the middle, the middle.
Speaker 2:and also I feel like hopefully the goal is that you can bridge it a little bit right, that you you can help the guys that you've worked with on the floor and you can help your kind of newer colleagues on the engineering side understand, and you know, if I'll go as well, hopefully you may get a bit better for everybody.
Speaker 1:And everyone goes and has beers together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a big community better for everybody and everyone goes and has beers together and yeah, and they walked off into the sunset.
Speaker 1:Engineers and others hand in hand someday. We can dream. We can dream, all right. Well, let's take the break for our commercials and supporters and advertisers right now, and when we get back here with andrea armstrong, who's out in bc, we're going to be talking about what she does now for a living, her day-to-day and uh, and then what's in the possible future, because I'd imagine there's some thoughts there.
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Speaker 1:My name is max strong and I'm here with andrea armstrong, who's coming to us from the beautiful west coast of canada and bc. So right before the break we kind of caught up to where you are in your educational you know journey. You're right on the cusp of getting into the legit engineering program and working on that mechanical engineering degree. What's the what's the hope, you know? Because there's, once you get to this level of education, there's kind of a couple things. One is r&d. Right, there's there's a desire for people to want to go down the r&d train, which is like kind of like top tier but way less work in the R&D world than in other more, I guess, tactile industries. And then the other piece is to be like the engineer, the retained engineer for a shop, but whether it's a foundry working with steels or, you know, construction, working with procedure development and whatever, where is it that you see your role evolving into as you work towards this education?
Speaker 2:I think there's a couple paths, and I don't know if any of them are solidified. I also just don't think that's how I've usually gone about things. I have places and goals for where I want to be and the type of work that I want to do.
Speaker 2:I don't know what that's going to look like yet and I'm really open to something coming out of left field and being like oh, I had no idea this was on the horizon but like, yeah, sure, let's give her, because I also think that's how I got into trades was being like what's this great thing to the corner so I've never and I've, I've, you know, I've had so much joy in my career from something that wasn't on my radar.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so I I think I have some goals for myself, I have some places or ideas of where I would want to go um, but also, we'll see. We'll see where it goes and I think I think we hit one of them on the head, which was R&D.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, R&D is like the beautiful science, right? Because you spend your day playing and proving and finding things that hopefully may not be found Now. Most of the people I know that are young engineers going down the R&D train that turns into a master's, that turns into a PhDd, that turns into a whole other world, which I think is wonderful but it gets you further and further away from the floor.
Speaker 1:Are you ready to be away from the floor like, are you okay if that chapter of your life moves on and you end up in like on the dream team, like some crazy, like there's think tanks in canada, like inotech and places that all they do is wild dreamy metallurgy stuff all day long, right?
Speaker 2:um, yes and no, I find to, at least from what I've seen, and, like I said, very new to this side of the field and new to the engineering side of a lot of I. I kind of look at it the same as like when I looked at some other shops there's more variety and it's almost more hands-on engineering that in some ways, yes, it's very removed from shop floor and from production and from manufacturing, but in other ways it's brand new, it's research. You have to physically do it.
Speaker 1:And it's a real problem.
Speaker 2:And there's not a lot of production engineering where they're going down and building the thing, and that's where I would be okay with it, because I'm a tradesman and I'm a tradesman at heart, and so if you're telling me I can do the science and then physically build it with my hands and do the work in some type of aspect, I like that idea. I like that idea of it still being a hands-on part.
Speaker 2:It's why I really like lab work as well, like I really enjoy lab work and destructive testing um and and actually doing it right, like of yeah of breaking the samples and polishing them and doing the work and doing the science and kind of some of the like work with it all right.
Speaker 1:So you know the the rnd dream. It's true, because when you get to the kind of PhD level of R&D, you're doing things that haven't been done before. So half the battle is even figuring out the machinery to do the things that you need to do, that you think you need to do. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And so that's where that that, to me, would would still be appealing, even though it's so removed, um, obviously, the other thing, uh, is that, like I've, I've come back to work for c-span each summer, um, I've been shipbuilding in canada for most of my career, um, and so I would love to stay in shipbuilding and I would love to keep building boats and I'd love to do. You see different sides of what that looks like, um, and I've seen a couple signs of it, but I would love to see more of that um, and we, I would love to see new boats and I really want to be part of the polar um that you know Canada is putting forward polar ships, so I really want to be part of that. So, there, I have a lot of goals within shipbuilding and if they will take me back, hopefully within C-SPAN.
Speaker 1:Are you a part of any of the shipbuilding associations for construction in Canada, because there's some really cool ones. Like there's a big conference in Vancouver in just a few weeks here, the ABCMI, the or the or the, oh, let me see, um, and I went to this one and I've been to a meritech, meritech is a year I know that one's is.
Speaker 2:Uh is amazing um I've never been, but I would really want to go to meritech.
Speaker 1:That's the thing for someone who's like engineering heavy and really into shipbuilding. You got to go to these. So the association of british columbia marine industries, abcmi, looked them up. They got a conference coming up right away, uh, nbc and uh, and, like I said, they're really really great people at these things. Right, because because you're surrounded by people with the same love for you and I. Actually I just read the write-up for the conference coming up in vancouver and it sounds like it's going to be a lot about defense contracts and and possible future ship building on the west coast. Meritech goes back and forth west east, so like if it's east serving, if it's west it's, it's east bank. I like the back and forth.
Speaker 1:But the science and technology going into ship building is rapidly accelerating because it kind of got left behind for a long time it was like, oh, we know how to build ships, there's nothing wrong with them, they're great. Let's just build them bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. But now I think in the modern world we're looking at engineering opportunities better materials, lighter materials, because how often do you use aluminum on a large scale industrial boat? Like never. But you know, because there's not those opportunities, well, maybe there's other materials that could be lighter and safer and more usable and more usable.
Speaker 1:I'm going off on a tangent now, but I was watching them. At one of the marine conferences I went to a new process where they use cold spray welding but they're not using metal little shot. They're using, like a type of metal plastic compound. That is not. It won't corrode under the salt water. So this is because the shaft that goes from inside to outside is always a huge wearer place for for boats, because it's a transition from oil to salt, and this material, uh, would protect all the stuff without wearing off. And see, stuff like this is like that's cool stuff. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like no, and there's really cool stuff and I know for me like a lot of what I got to see at c-span was like robotics, like welding robotics at work is wild um and being able to be a robotics operator and then being able to do a lot of the technical writing for like work instructions.
Speaker 2:Um was a lot of like how I first started transitioning into engineering sides. Um was from this like being a welder and then welding robotics operator. Um, and so, yeah, a lot of that. And that's where another part of like going the mechanical route of like okay, I can, I can learn more and I can fall on my kind of laurels here for a lot of the welding stuff and I can always go back and add more education if I need to. But Lord knows, I don't know anything about what's actually doing the robotics welding and that's where the mechanical engineering the last two years of studying specialized with weld engine first and then doing mechanical. That's. One of the other things I really want to look at is those huge welding robotic systems yeah, the automation systems that are coming out now, yeah they're like yeah, no, they are, they are just the coolest things.
Speaker 2:Um, they are. I also. I feel like everyone that is a human gives their robots names yeah, that's a thing yeah, yeah they're. I feel like any type of technology you work with every single day, it has to have a name.
Speaker 1:Um, and you already have names picked out in your head for when you get a robot.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, I do one of them will be theodore the third oh, I don't know why, no one's named theodore in my family, but I will have a robot named theodore the third that's my tnt that's maybe my main goal for education. I've've actually done you know, with the trade. Let's say you know four years.
Speaker 3:Do you have your favorite welding machine?
Speaker 2:Nine years of education to name a robot is. I think a suitable goal.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, when I had all my years up I think it was about 13 years of schooling and I'm still going like I mean, there's still courses that pop up in my world and I'm like I'm gonna take that. That looks really interesting, right like um, but uh, I don't have a robot and I've never named it. I don't know if I've named any of my welding machines. Is there something wrong with me that I haven't definitely that you should be a little bit concerned yeah, I have some deep trauma that I need to work on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you too absolutely, that's actually.
Speaker 2:You know I'm a little shaken on the call yeah, I'm sorry for the people listening. Please send me help, like I think we need to get you googly eyes to put on your welding machines because then I think you would name it, I think, if we gave them little human like features more animal features because I love cats.
Speaker 1:Maybe if it had cat ears on it I'd name it something. And I have a turtle, I love my turtle, I love turtles. Well, the machine's kind of like the turtles there we go.
Speaker 2:Now see, I'm forming something. It's going, it's going, it's going. It just took a minute. I just sent you in a chat.
Speaker 1:Just by the way, I just just sent you a chat link to the ABCMI.
Speaker 2:I saw that. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:It's actually. The conference is sponsored by C-SPAN, so I bet, if you talk to them that they could send you and be like hey, go check it out. Liz is usually at them.
Speaker 2:She's usually one of the people presenting, so to say I think Liz does go to them. I think I've heard her talk about some. For me I think it's like right in the middle of my school oh, that's usually that's usually where I, where I don't end up going to a huge amount of conferences um with going back to school, but I was able to get to the the cc west conference oh nice and that was really interesting and that was very cool and just seeing women um from kind of around canada and all the different stuff that they were doing so let's talk a little bit before we get to the end of the interview, because
Speaker 1:we've already blown through an hour. Just so you know it's just going so fast. It's awesome as a woman. Now you know getting up into like the higher echelon of your career. You've proven the proof is in the pudding or in the puddle. How about you know your wealth? Oh, the proof is in the pudding or in the puddle.
Speaker 3:And about you know your wet I love. The proof is in the puddle. I like that and you're welding. I don't know.
Speaker 1:you're making fun of it, yeah, yeah yeah, and now the welding engineering technician, level one inspector, now back to college for university. At some point, do you see yourself as a female mentor yourself, Like, like. Are you looking at yourself as a mentor yet? Because I can tell you from the outside that you are. But you, you don't really cross that line until you feel it. Because I remember where I was at a point where I was realizing a lot of people at work were asking me questions and asking me for advice and I'd be working with engineers and at one point I was like you know what? I think I crossed the line. I think now I'm the person people ask for help instead of me asking others. Right? Do you feel like you're getting there or you want to be there?
Speaker 2:I definitely want to be there eventually. I think it's very specific for me because I've gone back to school, um, and it's I've gone back and I've done.
Speaker 2:It's related, but it's a switch and because of that, I'm learning again and I am green again and I am making mistakes again, and so there are certain things that when, especially when I get, and then then in another way too, I've gone into this and so I feel like I'm getting a bit farther from like active shop floor stuff, that I'll have some apprentices like ask me something, and I'm like, oh, it's been a minute, like let me look this up before I tell you to go do something um, or like, give you advice on what this is of.
Speaker 2:Like I'm gonna need to go pull all my settings again and, like you know, scrolling through the phone, so I think I'm in a bit of a middle ground right now, of where in some ways I do feel that um, and then in other ways I feel like I'm brand new again. Um right, I don't think that'll ever end for you.
Speaker 1:I get the feeling like you're just gonna be an education dragon. Someone called me that because, like he whored education.
Speaker 1:You just keep like, oh, learn more, it's mine, it's my cave of knowledge, um, but that doesn't mean that you don't represent. And I'm trying to put the bug in you now to become more involved with the youth, because your path, your pathways, even to now represent a huge obstacle for many people women and men, all genders of getting out of a trade and into something education wise or getting out of education and back into a trade. And you're showing like that wall's not as big as people think it is right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was a hard transition. It definitely was. It was a hard transition for culture. It was a hard transition for confidence of going back to an educational setting. So there it definitely is. There's some fear there and there was, for sure, fear for me. I was, you know, scared out of my wits, but I looked at it. I was like, oh, I really want to do this. It's interesting, I want to see where it goes. So we're gonna, we're gonna try, we're gonna give her the college try. And I think one of the things that really helped me was having the red seal, because I thought, okay, if I fail, if everything goes to hell, and I put all this money out, you got a career I'm fine I I'm
Speaker 2:fine, I got a ticket, I got multiple tickets, I'm going to be okay. Like, worst case scenario is not terrible, and if it means the school takes a bit longer, that's fine. If I need to go pick up shutdowns during the summer, okay, that's okay. So I think for me I think a lot of the transition that made it easier was traits Was that I was like okay, I'm confident in one thing it makes me some money. I'm going to be okay, I have the ability to go do this. And it's one of the things that I do say now, especially to women. I say it to men as well, but mostly for women, because I find that it's not something we're taught about as much Of like. When I'm having, you know, my kind of nieces and nephews or friends, kids who are coming to this point of end of high school, graduating, and they're asking for advice and they're not too sure what they want to do, I'm like go get a trade. Go get a trade first, and if you want to go, get more education, do it.
Speaker 1:You have the luxury to decide.
Speaker 2:You can do it, but there's nothing wrong with starting at a trade.
Speaker 2:There's nothing wrong with starting in university, but that is, university can often be a lot more expensive, a lot slower before you have any sort of tickets or backing, that you can often be a lot more expensive, a lot slower, before you, you know you have any sort of tickets or backing that you can work on. Um, yeah, and so I've been. That's been a big one, that it's been really cool to see um, some, some like younger women starting to be like yeah, I'm trades and that doesn't mean that you know, trades and education is separate and I think that was maybe the cool one. For me was like I've seen a lot of people be like oh, I was bad at school, so I'm gonna go get a trade and I'm like what's that have to do with it?
Speaker 2:yeah, like also there's so much math in my trade like there's so much there's, so much they get so many of the smartest people I've met are welders. Go away Like there's. You know it's a bias that's not necessarily real right. Yeah, and it's one of those things of like a lot of, I think a lot of the reason traits work well for people, why they worked well for me. They're a different type of education.
Speaker 1:People learn differently.
Speaker 2:You learn hands-on and that works a lot better. And maybe you find out you're a lot better at learning math and learning trigonometry and angles. If you're measuring the angles and seeing how they react with each other when you're building a staircase, Maybe that works for you. It worked well for me.
Speaker 1:So you know we're getting close to the end of the interview. At this part of the interview normally I ask people like end game, where do you want to be? What do you want to do long term? But I feel like we've already kind of figured that out about andrea, shipbuilding, r&d, something rad. Okay, got it, that's. That's basically your, that's your window and there's going to be something in there that you'll probably get now in terms of you know the goals that you have. You know outside of professionally, like you want to be an engineer and you want to do these things. But what are the things that you would like to see yourself play out in terms of other roles as you get older? Do you see yourself as a business owner? Do you see yourself as a consultant? Do you see yourself as a teacher? You know, are these any of the pieces that have crossed your mind?
Speaker 2:I think they're. They're all definitely thoughts. I think I'm far enough away from a lot of them right now that it's just kind of like okay, this is the next step here, let's get that done. I think one of the things that I would love to see and it ties in to the rnd that I would like love to be a part of is that work and like lab manager and and starting those things and I could see business owner and I could see all those things. But I think for for the stuff that I like to do, you gotta be with big companies.
Speaker 1:You have to be, where you need to be with government where the money is, like the, like the nrc labs or anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and because I want to do cool things, and so I think it's have you been to the nrc lab in vancouver? No, I haven't been in oh, dude, that's cool I've seen photos of it. Next time I'm out there.
Speaker 1:I always go visit one of the doctors there, the the phd weld engineers that works there. Uh, mr zhao, he always gives me a tour and shows me all the coolest thing. I should give you a ring next time I'm in vancouver and I'll take you on a tour of that place. That is so cool, yeah they got some cool toys in there oh, so cool that's.
Speaker 2:So, I think, that style of work for right now I I really like this idea of of shipbuilding, but it's also like rovs and deep sea research. Um, I'm lucky enough, I have a great partner who is a pure scientist, um, and who does deep sea work and and works with rovs, and so starting to see that kind of stuff and and working actually works on all the coast guard vessels that c-span builds so everything's tied together, everything's everything's intertwined.
Speaker 2:So it's, and there are a lot of aspects that I could see happening, but I think we're just gonna see as we go yeah and I, you know, not say no to any of them and just see, see where it ends up, because I think it'll end up somewhere cool, although I feel actually I do do have one that I will gladly buy you A bottle of scotch, whatever you want. If you know anyone that explosive welds, I would at one point in my life.
Speaker 3:Want to see that.
Speaker 2:I want to see it. I want to do it At one point. I don't need to do it multiple times. I would like to see explosive welding happening we'll see what I can do. We'll have to stay in touch because that to me, I realize it's so far away from like my own personal goals and like my career building but, it's so cool it is it's so intense and even the way yeah, I was about to say the way it welds it with the swirls, like it gets those crazy swirls and eddies.
Speaker 1:It's like what it like crochets itself to the other metal. It's wild.
Speaker 2:I first like really learned about it in my eng tech and I was like this was an option that no one spoke to me about. You're telling me I could have an explosives ticket as a welder, like where was this information?
Speaker 1:bcig all right, let's let's wrap up the interview here. Andrea, this has been fantastic, but you know, let's do a hypothetical here, because it sounds like you've had a really adventurous career path, which which I love and I applaud and I recommend to anybody out there to be adventurous. Don't be scared, just get out there and try. But if you could, knowing what you know now in your life, you know, and the experiences you've had and there's quite a few could go back to right before you started the, the welding program, your first welding program what advice would you give yourself to prepare for the journey you know? Now that you went down, what advice would you give yourself if you go back, like in that time machine?
Speaker 2:I would get more tickets than what I did I would say, go go to Alec, get as many tickets as you can get. Because I got into this view of like I'm a welder and I want to make money and I'm 19. And so I'm going to go to shutdowns and I'm going to stick weld and I'm just going to chase shutdowns, and who really cares about the educational side of the welding? I don't need my A ticket. You know I'm working in shutdowns, I'm working stick welding. I don't need it it. You know I'm working in shutdowns, I'm working stick weld and I don't need it. And I think I would have told myself take the time off, take the paychecks off, like it's. You will have so much fun with the more wild experiences that you have and the more tickets that you have, um, and the more versatility that you have as a welder.
Speaker 1:I think, because it really does open up different jobs.
Speaker 2:It really does and and it just cool stuff and I and I do. It is one of those things like I wish I had done. You know, more allied and more like pipe and TIG welding. But I got into this thing that I was like, well, I want to make money and I have, you know, the shutdowns of the stick welding job, so that's what I'm going to do. So that's what I'm going to do. And then C-SPAN was mostly flux core and they do have a great pipe crew and I know that if I had gone back for my A.
Speaker 1:You could have done that.
Speaker 2:I could have done that, and I could have done it within the company, but I left for my education, I left for a different side. But I think I would have definitely told myself that, hey, yes, welding you can make a lot of money, but that, yes, welding you can make a lot of money, but that's not what it should be about that you take the time and enjoy, and enjoy the education of it, um all the different experiences, all the different things, all the different sides of it.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think of what else I would say to myself.
Speaker 1:I would probably say slow down yeah slow down, I got, I got my well, no, physically.
Speaker 2:Physically I moved too fast as an apprentice and I got told by a lot of older wilders and I got hurt a couple times and I think I would have just told my younger self of like slow the speed down, be safer than what you're being yeah, you're gonna hurt yourself or somebody else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just just to chip back a notch yeah yeah I think would have been would have been a much less, like you know, exciting one, but would have just been like you need to stop moving so quickly. Your grinder is not done running like you look dumb.
Speaker 2:You've almost taken out poor bob like yeah slow slow down, a little bit chill out it's okay, um, but yeah, I think the big one would just be like you know, yes, you know tree, yes, you want to go out and make money and get your hours and work. But you know, be okay with coming back and doing more tickets and and really push yourself to go get as many designations as you can get right, because that's the the other thing of like. You know, I welded pipe but didn't sit through my pressure pipes because I was like well, again, you know, I'm working chip building I got work, yeah, I got work and I I wish I would have done that, I wish I would have gone.
Speaker 2:Hey, here's this super cool welding ticket or whatever. They're just more tickets and they give me more versatility. Um, and I did start to do that once I was later on in my apprenticeship and once I was a red seal, but not pressure pipe, but, like you know, being more open to to doing different sides of the industry. But I think that would be a big one and I think what I would tell a lot of younger apprentices of like, you're gonna have work and it's gonna be awesome and you're gonna get these paychecks and you're gonna want to just go, but make sure that you're keeping up on the education side and keeping open and make sure you're keeping up with your designations and your tickets okay that's great advice and it's very, very true, very, very true.
Speaker 1:And I think most of the welders that I know, you know later in life as you start looking back, the welders that really work themselves into great jobs, great positions, great places, cool programs and jobs and projects, are the ones that took the time to learn a new thing, get the new ticket, learn the procedure, understand what you're doing. They're the ones that that climb quicker than the ones that are just hammering it out, which I get. Everyone's got different skill set and I've always been able like I mean, I, I'm a pretty good welder, but there's always someone better, right?
Speaker 1:so you gotta pick uh, you gotta pick your battles and see where your niche is right and I think maybe I would be the, the latin or an antenna here.
Speaker 2:But the last one I would say is once it was funny, once I got my red seal, I felt like I learned a lot more from other people and I think because as an apprentice, especially as a young apprentice and a young woman apprentice I had a bit of a chip about like yeah, I know how to do that.
Speaker 3:No, I'm good. I'm good and I hate it when I see young people do that.
Speaker 1:They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm good, I'm like, but are you really are?
Speaker 2:Well, and the thing is is like I never said that I knew something if I didn't, but I thought like, yeah, I can. You know I can do a fill weld with a stick. I know how to do that. Why would I watch someone else?
Speaker 2:And then, as I got older, into my apprenticeship, and then once I got my red seal, watching guys that yeah, we're doing the same weld, it holds to the same amount, but, oh my god, are they fantastic at it. And just having the bit of humility of like, yeah, I, I am a ticketed welder and I'm having all these things. He's amazing, and I'm gonna sit and I'm gonna put my hood on and I'm gonna see how he's doing that and watch, um, and be open to to being that right, because I was always really good about not saying I could do something if I didn't understand it, but I also was really bad in the way that once I did understand it, even at a basic level, I was like cool, no more need to watch and listen and learn to the point that it's at this, this different level you're like done with it yeah right.
Speaker 2:I was like, yeah, I can fill it out, great, I, you know, I can open root great. Instead of you know, having that to to sit and watch and be like I'm gonna keep learning and I'm gonna keep learning, you know, until I retire till I die there's always gonna be a better weather than me, and there's always gonna be people that are willing to show me a different way to do something. I think that was one of the ones that I really wish I would have known a bit younger, I think I would have been a much better welder.
Speaker 2:Awesome, Andrea.
Speaker 1:Well, this has been a great episode. Thank you so much for taking the time today to tell us your story, and I think there's a lot people can take out of this package and say you know they can apply it to their own lives because you know you are running at 100 miles an hour and, and good for you, man, it's, uh, it's a hard pace, uh, and do it while you can right. It gets harder to do it when you're older.
Speaker 1:So you're, you're doing the right things, uh, thanks for being on the show thank you so much, max, lovely to meet you yeah, you bet, and any shout outs you'd like to send out to anybody your hellos um, uh, steven kenny at state, my first metallurgy instructor.
Speaker 2:I'm so sorry I asked you so many questions. Uh, he has been a huge mentor. There are so many people I see span like liz newfeld is one of them who I'm like. Thank you so much. There are so many people that touch my career. Um, but definitely off the bat, my first metallurgy instructor, because I feel so sorry for that
Speaker 2:poor man. So many questions all the time I do. I still email him questions. I have not been in that program for a little bit now yeah, and he still emails me back answers because he's a kind of kid.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I have students reach out to me all the time and I love replying to them. I love that they still think of me. It makes me feel good, awesome, all right. So all the people that have been following and watching and downloading our podcast, please continue. We love what you're doing.
Speaker 1:We're doing lots of movements out there. We got lots of programs coming up. We're going to be down in Fabtech USA in Orlando in October. We're going to be at the AWMI conference in November in Nashville. We're going to be probably taking the Roadshow podcast with a few other places throughout the year. The chapters are revving up. There's going to be chapter events happening in every province across Canada and you know what we're all getting out there. We're networking, we're mentoring, we're helping out the community and that's what it's all about. So appreciate you tuning into the podcast. Keep downloading them, commenting us and if you have anything you'd like us to talk about topic-wise, or if you think you know someone cool that you'd like me to interview, just shoot me a message on Instagram I'm AskMax75 on IG or reach out to the CWB Association anytime. We're always around and we're always looking for great stories. So, thanks a lot. Tune in for the next one. I'll catch you there. We hope you enjoy the show.
Speaker 3:You've been listening to the cwb association welding podcast with max. If you enjoyed what you heard today, rate our podcast and visit us at cwb associationorg to learn more. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions on what you'd like to learn about in the future. Produced by the CWB Group and presented by Max Holm, this podcast serves to educate and connect the welding community. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.