Planning a course

Campbell’s complaint in 1919 was not that welding classes were rare but that each taught in an entirely different way, and his manual was an attempt to give schools a standard, systematic method. A training plan does the same for a business. It sets out what each trainee will learn, in what order, with how many hours of practice and theory, who will teach it, where it will happen, and how progress will be judged. Without a plan, training happens when the work allows and stops when the work is busy, which is when it is needed most.

This chapter builds the fabricator’s first-year plan as a sequence of modules, balances theory against practice using Campbell’s observation about how much students can absorb, checks that the shop has the booths and instructors to deliver it, and shows how supervised production work becomes part of training rather than an interruption to it.

What a 1919 course covered

The Davis-Bournonville course of 1919 was organised as a series of lectures with workroom exercises alongside. Its lecture list ran from combustion, the flame and its structure, and regulating the gas supply, through the torch, explosive mixtures, flashbacks and backfires, heat and temperature, oxygen and acetylene and their supply, to welding itself: expansion and contraction, preheating, preparing joints, welding rods and fluxes, welding different metals, testing welded joints, brazing, gas piping, the cutting torch, cutting machines, and finally care of the eyes and safety. It was a complete course in the process, theory and practice together, for a single process.

A modern course for the fabricator’s trainees covers different processes but the same kinds of subject: the equipment and how it works, the materials and how they behave, the joints and how to prepare them, the welding itself, inspection and testing, and safety.

Modules

The fabricator’s plan divides the first year into modules, each with a defined outcome and a test. A trainee moves to the next module when the test is passed, not when the calendar says so, so the four trainees spread out through the plan at their own rates.

Figure 1The fabricator's first-year welding modules

1. 1Safety induction and equipmentabout 10 hours; safe set-up, gas, fume, eye and electrical safety; machine controls
2. 2Arc control and beadsabout 30 hours; striking, stickout, travel speed, straight beads on plate
3. 3Fillet welds, flat and horizontalabout 120 hours; coupons to break test, then the shop procedure
4. 4Fillet welds, vertical-upabout 150 hours; introduced early and mixed with the flat and horizontal work
5. 5Reading procedures and self-inspectionabout 20 hours alongside; procedures, gauges, visual criteria
6. 6Supervised productionabout 70 hours; low-risk welds, every weld inspected

The hours add up to about 400 hours of practice in the first year, plus the theory sessions described below, which is consistent with the learning curves of Chapter 3: on those illustrations, a typical trainee is approaching a reject rate of about 9% on fillet coupons at 400 hours, close to the target, while the fastest are well past it and the slowest still some way short.

Tests at the end of each module

Each module ends with a short test that decides whether the trainee moves on. For the fillet modules, the test is a set of coupons welded without help, inspected visually against the shop’s criteria and broken open to check fusion, with the trainee required to pass a stated number in a row. Using the same kind of test as the final qualification, on a smaller scale, means that the trainee has been tested in the same way many times before the formal test, which makes the formal test less of an ordeal and its result more predictable, as Chapter 7 explains.

Choosing the practice joints

Practice joints should look like the work. The fabricator’s production is mostly fillet welds in carbon steel plate from 6 to 16 mm, in tee and lap joints, in the flat, horizontal and vertical-up positions, so its practice coupons are tee joints in 10 mm plate, with some in 6 mm and 16 mm once the trainee is consistent. Butt welds, overhead welding and other processes are left to later, after the trainee is qualified for the main work, because time spent on them in the first year delays the skill the business needs most. The coupon is also chosen to be easy to break open, so that every few coupons can be tested quickly, and cheap to make, from offcuts of the shop’s own plate where possible. A coupon that looks nothing like the work, or cannot be tested, makes practice less useful.

Equipment for training

Training booths should have the same equipment as production, set up the same way: the same power sources, guns, wire and gas, the same extraction and the same positioners and clamps. A trainee who learns on a different machine has to relearn its settings and feel when moving to production. Each booth also needs what production does not: a bench vice and a press or hammer for breaking coupons, a saw or grinder for cutting sections, weld gauges, a magnifier and good light for inspection, and a board where the trainee’s record and the inspection criteria are posted. The cost of equipping a booth properly is small beside the cost of the trainee’s time in it.

Experienced welders as mentors

The instructor is not the only teacher. Every experienced welder in the shop teaches trainees whether they mean to or not, by example, by casual advice and by what they tolerate. The fabricator asks its experienced welders to act as mentors for supervised production work, briefs them on the plan and the inspection criteria, and asks them to correct a trainee’s technique in the same terms the instructor uses. The failure in Chapter 1, where a habit was passed from one welder to the next, is the reason: mentoring works when the mentors agree on what good practice is, and teaches bad habits when they do not.

Theory against practice

Campbell observed that students could absorb only so much in the lecture room, however fast the ground was covered, and that his school had spent much effort finding the right ratio between lectures and shop work. The same observation, made in modern terms, is that theory sticks when it answers a question the trainee has just met in the shop. A short explanation of why vertical-up welding fuses the root better than downhill welding, given the day after the trainee has seen a downhill coupon break open, is remembered; the same explanation given in the first week is not.

The fabricator’s plan therefore puts theory in short sessions, about an hour, each tied to the module the trainee is on: gas and fume safety at the start, the effects of heat on steel when they begin fillet welds, distortion when they first see a coupon pull out of square, defects and their causes as soon as they start break testing, and procedures and qualification as they approach the test. The plan has about 60 hours of theory in the year, roughly one hour for every six or seven of practice.

Figure 2The first year's training hours by kind

Practice in the training booths330 hours a trainee

Supervised production welding70 hours a trainee

Theory sessions in the shop60 hours a trainee

Qualification test preparation and test15 hours a trainee

Apprentices and the training organisation

The two apprentices also attend off-the-job training with a registered training organisation as part of their apprenticeship, which covers theory and practice towards their trade qualification. The fabricator’s plan does not duplicate that training; it complements it with practice in the shop’s own processes and procedures, and the instructor keeps in touch with the training organisation so that what the apprentices learn there and in the shop fits together. For Chris and Dee, who are not apprentices, the shop’s plan is the whole of their training, and the manager is considering a skills recognition assessment for each once they qualify.

Booth capacity

Training needs somewhere to happen. The fabricator has two training booths, each with a power source, extraction, a bench and positioners for vertical work. Each is available for about 38 hours a week.

Figure 3Booth hours needed and available each week

utilisation = trainees × practice hours a week ÷ (booths × booth hours a week)

Trainees

4

Practice hours each a week

about 8 in booths

Booths and hours

2 booths × 38 hours

1. hours needed = 4 × 8 = 32 a week
2. hours available = 2 × 38 = 76 a week
3. utilisation ≈ 32 ÷ 76 ≈ 42%

At about 42% utilisation, the booths have room for extra practice when a trainee falls behind, for refresher practice for experienced welders (Chapter 8), and for qualification tests. A plan that needed more booth hours than the booths offer would fail quietly, as practice sessions were cut short or skipped.

Instructor time

Trainees need an instructor nearby: to watch, correct, inspect coupons and break them, and to keep the work safe. The fabricator assigns one experienced welder as the lead instructor for part of each day, with a second covering when needed, and plans for about one hour of instructor time for every four trainee hours in the booths in the early modules, falling to about one in eight once trainees are working independently on fillet practice. The instructor time is real time taken from production, and Chapter 5 includes it in the cost of practice.

Instructors also need preparation. A good welder is not automatically a good instructor, and the fabricator sent its lead instructor on a short training course in workplace instruction and assessment, and gave them the plan, the coupon records and the inspection criteria in writing, so that all four trainees were taught and judged the same way.

Supervised production work

Training booths can teach the skill, but they cannot fully teach the job: welding at height on a platform, with poor access, a deadline and an imperfect fit-up. The last module of the first year is therefore supervised production welding on low-risk work, such as handrail brackets, stair treads and secondary steel, with every weld inspected by the instructor. That work is useful to the business, which partly offsets the training cost, and it is where the trainee learns to apply the skill under real conditions. The rule that every trainee weld is inspected, and that nothing the trainee welds goes into a primary structural member until they are qualified, protects the business and the trainee.

The timeline

This is an illustration. With modules passed at each trainee’s own pace, the manager’s plan for a typical trainee practising about 8 hours a week in the booths, plus production work later, looks like this.

Figure 4A typical trainee's first year

1. Weeks 1 to 2Safety induction, equipment and arc controlfirst beads on plate
2. Weeks 3 to 14Fillet welds, flat and horizontal, with vertical-up from week 6break testing begins
3. Weeks 15 to 36Fillet welds in all three positions, mixedreading procedures, self-inspection
4. Weeks 37 to 46Supervised production on low-risk weldsevery weld inspected
5. Weeks 47 to 50Qualification test preparation and testwitnessed to the applicable standard

Writing the plan down

The plan is a short document: the target for each trainee, the modules with their outcomes, hours and tests, the theory sessions, the booth schedule, the instructor and mentors, the records to be kept and the monthly review. Each trainee has a copy and a record sheet, on which modules are signed off as they are passed. Writing it down took the manager a day, and it does three things a plan in the manager’s head cannot: it makes the training the same for every trainee, it shows each trainee where they are and what is next, and it survives the manager being away or leaving.

Keeping the plan alive

A training plan is reviewed monthly against each trainee’s learning curve. If a trainee is ahead, the next module starts sooner; if behind, the instructor looks at the reasons recorded for rejected coupons, changes the instruction, and adds practice. The plan also bends to the business’s work: in a busy month, practice may be cut, but never to zero, because a trainee who stops practising for weeks begins to lose skill (Chapter 8). The manager protects a minimum of four booth hours a week for each trainee whatever the workload.

A failure: two weeks in the classroom

This is an illustration. When the fabricator first tried structured training some years earlier, it began with two full weeks of theory for its trainees, covering welding processes, metallurgy, joint design, symbols, safety and inspection, before they picked up a gun. When practice started in the third week, the trainees remembered little of it, and the instructor found himself explaining the same points again at the booth.

The lesson, which Campbell’s school had learned the same way, was built into the current plan: theory in short sessions, each tied to what the trainee is doing in the booth that week. Safety is the exception, and is taught before anyone welds, because it cannot wait until the trainee has met the hazard.

Exercise: room for a fifth trainee

The fabricator is asked to take a fifth trainee. Using the booth figures in this chapter, calculate the booth utilisation with five trainees at 8 hours a week each. Then calculate it if all five trainees reach the vertical-up module at the same time, when the plan calls for 12 booth hours a week each.

With five trainees at 8 hours, the booths are needed for 5 × 8 = 40 hours a week out of 76, a utilisation of about 53%. If all five need 12 hours, the booths are needed for 60 hours, about 79% utilisation.

At 79%, there is little room for extra practice, refreshers for experienced welders or qualification tests, and any breakdown of a booth would cut practice. The manager could take the fifth trainee but would stagger the start dates so that the trainees do not all reach the heaviest module together, or add a third booth.