THE ODESSA FILE

The city of Odessa, TX, has firmly cemented itself as the headquarters of the vast petroleum industry in the Permian Basin, an area known for its rich stock of oil and natural gas. Welding jobs are abundant in this region, as it is a necessary process in the daily operations of the oil and gas market. Here, the challenge does not lie in the absence of jobs, but rather in the lack of trained welders to fill open positions.

?There was a huge, immediate need for welders,? notes Jim Mosman, Odessa College?s Welding Training Center coordinator. ?We did a study with the Permian Basin Workforce Development Board and several other organizations, and discovered the area had a real shortage of entry-level welders.?

GOVERNMENT FUNDING SUPPORTS TEXAS WELDING

With this in mind, the college, which offers a two-year credited Associate degree program in welding, set forth to obtain funding to create a non-credit, fast-track training program to help increase the region?s welding workforce.

?While we do have excellent enrollment in our degree program, it doesn?t help potential workers who may not have a high school diploma or a GED,? explains Mosman, adding that the need for skilled welders ?has grown immensely in the past couple of years thanks to rapid growth of the oilfield construction industry and also the retirement of numerous Baby Boomer welders.?

The college received a $1.75 million Community-Based Job Training Grant from the U.S. Department of Labor?s Employment and Training Administration. These grants seek to strengthen the role of community colleges in promoting the U.S. workforce's full potential. The program builds on the president?s High Growth Job Training Initiative, a national model for demand-driven workforce development implemented by strategic partnerships between the workforce investment system, employers, community colleges and other training providers.

Specifically, these grants seek to build the capacity of community colleges to train workers to develop the skills required to succeed in high-growth/high-demand industries, and in the case of the Permian Basin region, welders. Odessa College was one of 75 grant recipients out of more than 400 applications.

Thanks to the grant, the Welding Training Center provides free training in basic welding fundamentals, offering customized, non-credit training to novice student and adult welders, as well as workers who might already be welding but are looking to retrain or gain the formal training and welding certification they previously might not have received. The college runs five, eight-week training sessions a year, teaching between 50 and 60 students in each session.

?There?s such a huge need for entry-level welders that we hope to train around 500 of them in the next two years,? says Mosman. The college has also recently received the American Welding Society?s ?Image of Welding? award for Educational Institutions for its quality training program.

USING THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY

With the grant in hand, the college faced another hurdle: how to convert a vacant woodworking area into a high-tech, 30-booth training center in time for a January opening. Their solution was to partner Lincoln Electric (Cleveland, OH) with local welding distributors Westair and Airgas. Funding paid for all of the training equipment in the 7,500-sq-ft classroom, including nearly $100,000 in equipment and consumables for student workstations.

The 30 welding booths are equipped with 21 Invertec® V275-S units for stick and DC TIG welding, and ten Invertec® V350-PRO for multi-process output with LF-72 wire feeders for MIG welding. As the lead instructor, Mosman says these units were the logical choice for the center?s fast-paced, entry-level training program for two reasons: teachability and size. ?They?re easy to use and easy to train students on in a teaching environment,? he remarks. ?Plus, there are obvious cost savings using inverters instead of old transformer style units. And the size is better. They don?t take up as much room in the welding booths.?

Many Odessa Welding Training Center students will wind up working on oilfield construction sites, so it?s appropriate they use the V275-S, which is ideal for use in outdoor environments and delivers up to 275 amps of output with selectable hot start and variable arc force. The unit?s unique Touch-Start TIG? design permits the TIG welding arc to be established without high-frequency starting.

During the eight-week session, students focus mainly on shielded metal arc welding. Once they master the stick process, students then get a one-week look at MIG welding and perform welding tests with this process. ?Those who finish their structural certification test can move on and start doing work in pipe welding,? Mosman says, adding that the course also covers oxyfuel cutting and how to use torches.

SAFETY COMES FIRST

Reliable fume extraction is essential in a tight classroom environment. The college invested $180,000 of grant money in two Statiflex® 6000-MS Welding Fume Extractors. These central filtration and extraction systems give welders a safe and clean work environment by providing 99.8-percent filtration efficiency of overall weld fumes. A Lincoln sales rep worked with the school and architects to design a system that met all their needs.

A single Statiflex® 6000 unit provides filtration for a maximum of 15 arms, dependent on facility layout and weld station configuration. College officials wanted each welding training center booth to have local exhaust ventilation, so they installed 30 arms between both units.

?When you have 30 or more students in a tight space, the first thing you teach them is how to properly deal with fumes. We wanted the most modern, top-of-the-line system that we could have,? Mosman says. ?Our supplier delivered both on the safety aspects and the technology on all the products we have running the center. We?re pleased, and so are the students.?

The Lincoln Electric Company, 22801 Saint Clair Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44117, 216-481-8100, www.lincolnelectric.com.