Provincial Millwright Program
2006 Articulation
Friday, November 3, 2006
Kwantlen University College
Langley, BC
MINUTES
IN ATTENDANCE:
Carl Burton, College of New Caledonia; John Byron, BCIT; Bob Davis, Kwantlen University
College; Guy Ellis, BCIT; Mike Heward, BCIT; Larry Keaton, North Island College; Gywn
Mardon, College of New Caledonia; Brian McClinton, Kwantlen University College; Jim
McColman, Northwest Community College; Doug Podetz, Kwantlen University College; Jim
Simmons, Northern Lights College; Gord Balfour, Millwright Union 2736 (afternoon session only)
CALL TO ORDER:
Carl Burton, Chairperson, called the meeting to order at 9:00 am.
WELCOME:
Carl Burton thanked Bob Davis and Kwantlen University College for hosting the meeting. He
also welcomed articulation committee members. Self introduction of round table followed. Carl
also welcomed and introduced Dana Goedbloed, who is the Acting Dean of the Kwantlen
College of Trades and Technology.
APPROVAL OF AGENDA:
MOVED by (name here), SECONDED by (name here), that the November 3, 2006 Agenda be
approved with no changes and/or deletions.
CARRIED
APPROVAL OF OCTOBER 7, 2005 MINUTES:
MOVED by (name here), SECONDED by (name here), that the minutes of October 7, 2005 be
approved.
CARRIED
ONLINE STUDY GUIDE
 Carl Burton introduced Brooke Mills of Kwantlen University College, who presented the
online study guide project.
 This project was something that faculty at Kwantlen identified as a need, which was
developed specifically for internationally trained trades people who are trying to enter the
millwright trade. It was funded through Economic Development of BC. Contact
Brooke.Mills@kwantlen.ca for more information about this evolving project or to provide
feedback. Project includes:
 Course work is divided into 5 sections based on apprenticeship courses and
levels
 Tried to touch on most subject areas, but unfortunately there’s gaps
 Millwright Manual was the key resource
 Tool glossary has both image and audio components to describe each hand
tool, which were developed to recognize and integrate cultural differences
 The objective for the project is to:
 Assist and prepare foreign-trained millwrights to possibly challenge the Red
Seal exam, enter trades training or discover how their training could be used
here in Canada.
 Provides a language guide that will help address language challenges due to
the sophistication of language in the millwright trade
 Provide a self-assessment tool so immigrants can get a sense of topics used
in the first year and decide if they’re prepared for it
 Address concerns of safety on the job
 The link to the site is http://learn.kwantlen.ca/learn/200610/elst1000a75.nsf (from KUC’s
portal page www.kwantlen.ca: Programs and Service Updates, Course Updates, Online
Study Guide for Immigrants)
 Questions and Concerns about online study guide: non-natives to Canada may not
understand how to navigate into the site so the interface was developed to not be too
confusing so that it could function more as a guide providing direction, but not a course;
observation that the interface was quite technical English in order to navigate the site;
needs to get to grade 12 English before he can even figure out how to navigate;
 Steering committee for this included Geoff Stevens from the ITA, who brought
skill knowledge from the country he was from; was involved in trying to lay out
a way in approaching the website and the terminology.
 Would like to develop more vocabulary lists to better prepare people using
the website; concern was that the site needed to show the level that someone
does need to become part of the trade; it’s purpose is to provide support, but
also have a realistic view of real life situations.
 Available to access free of charge; access to the Queen’s printer.
 Concern about students who are not computer literate and try to use online
testing; many apprentices are computer and sometimes English illiterate.
 Could this be a resource used in a first year class for ELTT? Yes, it could be
used as a part of learning computer skills and also fit in with the
communication component.
 Review process being done by Economic Development to continue
developing this for a few years that can be used as a resource/supplement.
MILLWRIGHT PROGRAM STANDARDS REVIEW STEERING COMMITTEE UPDATE NOA
VALIDATION BOOKLET REVIEW - CARL BURTON
 NOA Validation Booklet is a partnership between the ITA and IFLRA. The target is to
put the NOA into place by January with the program outline to be completed by
February. The scope of the committee is that it is taking the NOA and aligning it with the
provincial NOA update which dates to 1999. A contractor will be hired to compile it, but
will be overseen by the committee. The SME will work with contractor to hash out the
new outline. The group makeup will consist of 12-14 SME who will involve reps from all
sectors to build the new outline that will be in alignment with the national one.
o Bob Davis will be soliciting feedback from Articulation group. It was felt that he
would have to “fight” to maintain parts in the new provincial outline and that it
would have a huge impact on quality for Millwright trades people.
 Carl went through the SME working group on the back of handout. Included was a list of
experts that would bring the outline together. The ITA will be providing the funding with
a budget of $100,000 to put it all together. Currently there is no forecast to have a
national outline. However, there has been talk of this. Gord Balfour’s name needs to be
added to page 2 of handout for the Project Steering Committee Contact Information. A
Durham College–Fulford partnership originally developed this.
 Second handout
o RFP: Reviewed proposals to determine what should be included on the outline.
The purpose was two-fold: (1) creating a new outline for BC that needs to be
compared to the NOA for the exam and (2) ensure that the curriculum matches.
o March, 2007 is the expected completion of the outline.
o A question was asked as to whether this group will become the ITO for the
millwright trade or will there be Invited guests consisting of millwright trades
persons?
o See handout for details: Overview of committee
 Looking at levels of exams; have an exam for each year and have a
certain weighting; end of 7 weeks and not at the start like the other ones
are; small practical mark.
 Deliverables will be modified.
 Projected completion: May 6, 2007
 Fulford has done this in the past, so history is pretty good; they have
been hired as the contractor; try to squeeze this in
 Action: Gord Balfour will serve as rep for millwright union. There will be
about four meetings in total in order to compose this.
 NOA Validation Booklet was validated on Monday
o Carl asked for the Articulation committee to review the booklet and requested
feedback on the draft. No one had yet seen this book. The Articulation
committee then went through the Booklet Task by Task with the following
outcomes:
 IP Exam: directly related to the Validation
 First Block: rankings looked pretty good although there was a question
about the ranking of Access Equipment
 Task 2: Current ranking appeared out of “whack”
 Task 3: Good order
 Task 4: Layout pretty straight forward
 Task 5: Plasma cutting, how important is this?
 Task 6: Prepares and installs
 Task 7: Good order
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o
o
Task 8: Safety comes first on all these; Good
Task 9: Good
Task 10: Questionable order in ranking
 “Maintain” before you can “troubleshoot”
 Installation is foundational; specialization within the industry
 This task relates to servicing so the order may be okay
 “Troubleshooting” as opposed to the word “diagnose”; change the
word since it may be misleading
 Is this creating more theory rather than a more practical exam? Is
this a trend?
 “Preventative maintenance,” where does this come in? Choice of
words needs to be re-examined.
 Without history of previous involvement of NOA, perhaps more is
being read into the weighting. How does the weighting affect the
result further down the line?
 Task 10-12-20: All seem to be the same
 Task 20: “Maintain” is ranked higher than “install”
 Task 19:
 Is it part of the MW trade – tanks and pumps?
 AB, MB do about 2 weeks doing pipe fitting
 Task 21,22: Good
 Task 23: ranking is out of order; overall task is least
Weighting:
 IP exam should perhaps be more involved, maybe have 150 questions.
 Too much value is put on an exam as opposed to the practical
 Difficult to deal with – weighting is perhaps skewed because the
component of the exam might be weighted higher in other
provinces according to the course outlines and training times.
Ontario only has three levels and 12 weeks in school over each
year
 Not a lot different from the old one.
 Weighting of Tasks:
 “Block F” again the wording is open to discussion: “analyze” and
“performs,” too much emphasis on what this wording connotes;
Many in the millwright trade are concerned about the “chopping
up” of the trade and want to prevent the possibility of it consisting
of highly specialized areas in various trades. It was felt that the
majority of students don’t have the variety of experience to carry
into their skills into another province, but specialization isn’t
necessarily desired either. Is there pressure from companies in
the industry to move toward specialization?
Consensus on the booklet:
 Major changes: can’t change much, but need clarification of language
and wording.
 Perhaps the committee doesn’t really know what it’s like to actually teach
the curriculum in BC. Perhaps there has been some redundancy or
obsolete tasks being done that are not being done in BC. Perhaps
justification of why a task is being done should be included and also
examples or perspective should be given of what is truly being done in
BC
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Need to be careful about losing hands-on projects to teach basic
millwright skills, but need to keep the amount of training time is being
allowed to teach which skills are the most important
 Will be a difficult process, “new edge on the wedge”
Carl showed a slide show presentation of their new millwright shop at the College of
New Caledonia.
SKILLS CANADA BC – ADAM CARLSON
 Distributed an information package to attendees and if anyone is interested in being on
the mailing list, please contact Adam at the information provided in the package.
 They are hoping to have a full-blown competition with the winner moving up to the
national level and possibly advancing to internationals. The idea behind Skills Canada is
to promote secondary education, provide regional competition and exposure for students
for all options for post-secondary. All competitions are run by volunteers and funded by
province and industry. Funding is “in-kind” to volunteer time. There are opportunities to
be involved on the committee, but they do try to avoid conflict of interest in judging.
 SC provides infrastructure for the competition and host sites provide equipment and
logistics for registration as well as getting students to the competition. When asked who
pays for travel and accommodation, Adam said that either the student or school pays,
but sponsors may be available or used as an option.
 National Skills Canada is a separate organization from Skills BC. However, in order to
minimize expenses, they have a partnership with them. Funds also come through
industry.
 Competition criteria and details: must be under 23 years of age for international
competition (accepts people up to 29 years of age provincially); millwright competition is
not offered at the international level and is only North American based; the community
determines how many seats are actually involved for the various trades competitions;
ELTT and Apprenticeship can both compete; in BC, criteria is for first year only, but
nationals are on a larger scope; high school students seem particularly interested.
 Provided in the handout is a “scope” document so that students know the scope and
sequence of the competition.
 Mike Herward is currently the instructor contract for industry.
GORD BALFOUR – MILLWRIGHT UNION 2736
 Works all over the province with millwright apprentices and currently has 50 apprentices
in the union.
 Involved with Skills Canada and ITA review
APPRENTICESHIP REPORTS PROGRAM DISTRIBUTION AND TUTORIAL - GWYN
MARDON
 Gwyn distributed a database CD that he created using Microsoft Access for ITA school
reports. This database electronically tracks ITA progress reports for students.
 The ITA has indicated that they want to move to a “pass” or “fail” grading system.
 Gwyn encouraged feedback from the committee and also said that he realizes that the
buy-in into the database will need to come from instructors or support staff persons. He
said that each school may want to survey their own personnel to determine interest in
implementing the system he has developed. There was concern that if the ITA is
reworking the AIMS system to provide a more simplified structure for software and also
offering access to their database from other institutions this may create a convergence
or conflict. Gwyn encouraged instructors to email the reports to various groups who
need this information and said that while there is great potential for his database, it could
also be a natural evolution for the future.
OPEN FLOOR ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION FROM EACH INSTITUTION
 Bob Davis – Kwantlen
o Slide show of photos of Kwantlen’s new Trades and Technology campus in
Cloverdale.
o Bob talked about his recent trip down to Amatrall in Bowling Green, Kentucky to
look at the millwright training centre there. This facility offers advanced millwright
training skills, and has online curriculum, etc. He found that there was no set
standard in millwright curriculum in the USA making the Red Seal for Canadians
very beneficial.
 Carl Burton – College of New Caledonia
o Carl announced that Robin Taylor was retiring from CNC after 28 years of
instructing. He also said that he had received regrets for Lindsay Langill for not
being able to attend the Articulation meeting.
 John Byron – BCIT
o John is working on a paper for 2010 and a project for BCGEU that includes
materials about media information, document cameras, and smart boards that no
one sees or has heard of. Hopefully management will look at some of the
options he proposes so that instructors could possibly employ in delivering the
curriculum.
o Trade union is a full cohort. However, students complain about not being able to
get into classes when needed especially for those who have had to make some
adjustments just to attend.
o IMA Program will be finished the end of April. The ITA will be rescinding funding
unless instructional time can get down to 29 weeks. There is concern that there
seems to be a will to front load the training which could be a disaster because
there would be no intake on this program.
o ELTT rolling along nicely. SAIT and NAIT have incredible funding with about half
coming from industry.
 Guy Ellis – BCIT
o Guy said that BCIT is dealing with same challenges as everyone else.
o Apprentice numbers are at 90% utilization with the new magic number for ITA
being 12.
o IMF program does not fit their formula for funding so is now on the back burner.
o ITA is working on their record keeping and forging ahead with level exams at
every level and every trade if possible. The intent is so that people can
challenge exams and possibly skip the technical training. Guy encouraged other
millwrights to be involved to ensure that exams are rigorous enough to maintain
integrity for technical training.
 Jim McColman – Northwest Community College
o NCC overhauled their ELTT to meet the new standards and also incorporated the
first year outline curriculum to be delivered in 22 weeks.
o
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BC seems to have an eye to Alberta, so they have incorporated CTC students
into the ELTT program hoping that if the ELTT pot “dries up,” high school
students will enroll to fill the ELTT programs.
o They have also looked at reducing their year. Jim said that he will teach 2nd
year apprenticeship courses in order to encourage ELTT students to take their
2nd year technical training. He said that if possible, he may be retiring soon and
thanked everyone for the privilege of being their colleague.
Jim Simmons – Northern Lights College
o Jim is new to the industry from the northeast part of the province and said that
NLC is feeling the influx from Alberta.
o He said that there have been some issues, on of which he was thrown into the
position and found it confusing to start. They deliver BC curriculum, but use an
Alberta textbook that has a number of errors. He wondered if there is a method
to review textbook errors.
o Jim said that there is a huge push in the compressor field to make it a separate
trade, but he strongly disagrees with it because it is millwright work. He said that
there is a strong proponent in the province to take components out of millwright
and break the trade up into small chunks. He also said that when the ITA first
came in, one of their goals was to chop it up because it seemed that this move
was industry driven. It would appear that it is a short term solution to a long term
problem and what it will end up doing is creating a skilled work force instead of a
trained work force, which would eliminate transference of skills within the
industry.
Larry Keaton – North Island College
o The NIC millwright program was discontinued for a few years which hurt
enrollment figures, but the level 1 class is full. He said that while he found it
stressful re-developing the program from scratch, he said that it was also fun
because it allowed him to improve and adjust the program and set up the shop,
which will be an ongoing project.
o Larry said that he too is concerned about what is happening in the industry.
Doug Podetz – Kwantlen
o Doug said that all the class intakes were maxed out each year and his role is
administrative rather than a hands-on instructor in the classroom.
o He said that the ITA is on a major campaign to identify students as trainees, but
is concerned about some of the disadvantages which will affect students in terms
of employment.
o One major issue is that the Ministry of Education is working closely with the ITA
to dovetail curriculum in order to develop courses that exist in high school. The
intent is to give high school instructors the option of delivering level 1 curriculum
of the program. He said that he has talked with Lindsay Langill of the ITA about
the amount of students in the program and is concerned about giving school
districts the option to control the curriculum and invigilate the level 1 exams
without any input from post-secondary institutions. He said that while he would
like to see the partnership with the school districts continued, he would like to
maintain the invigilation of exams to be done by the post-secondary institutions.
There seems to be a major push to broaden the delivery of the program, giving
control and delivery to organizations other than post-secondary. Doug said he
will be keeping a focused eye on where post-secondary technical training in the
province is going.
Gord Balfour – Millwright Union
o
o
o
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There are 400 members with 50 apprentices across BC.
He said the union is very much opposed to dissecting the industry into
specializations.
Skills Canada is looking for volunteers so if anyone is interested to contact either
him, or Adam Carlson.
Gord also encouraged everyone to get involved with SMEs. Bob Davis reiterated
what Gord said because it’s very important to bring seasoned expertise to the
table to protect the integrity of the millwright trade. Email any concerns about the
process to Bob or Carl. Everyone was also encouraged to create an email listserve in order to include everyone in the loop so that there would be
transparency in the dialogue and also to prevent the “divide and conquer”
concept.
CLOSING:
 Carl thanked Gord Balfour for attending and Bob Davis for hosting.
NEXT MEETING:
Carl will confirm the first option, Selkirk College. If they are not available then the second option
would be North Island College. Larry Keaton will confer with Carl to determine possibility.
Date: October 26, 2007; Location: tba
ADJOURNMENT: 4:20 p.m.